“Do you think they’ll win?” Thom asked, leaning over the display, trying to wring some new information out of the gray shapes.
Ehta laughed. “That’s what cataphract fighters are made for, kid. Fighting line ships. Of course, it doesn’t always work.”
“They’ll make it,” Thom said. “They have to.”
Having received the update, they had no reason to stick around. Thom knew they couldn’t proceed with Ensign Ehta there, but he had no idea how to get rid of her. Roan went over and examined a rack of equipment, while Thom just stood in the middle of the room. He realized how sweaty his hands were and he shoved them in his pockets. He caught himself staring at Ensign Ehta, and tried to look away. When he looked back she was staring at him, with a sly look on her face.
“You two, huh?”
“What?” he asked, a little too quickly. His voice a little too high-pitched.
A mischievous smile played across her face. “I suppose it’s no great surprise.”
“It isn’t?” Thom asked.
“Hell, kid. I remember when I was your age. And the two of you’ve been thick as thieves the last couple of days. It’s the oldest story in the world.”
Thom’s mouth wouldn’t seem to close properly. He had no idea what she was talking about. When he looked over at Roan, though, he saw she was blushing bright red.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ehta said, rising from her chair. “You throw two young people together, they’re bound to at least start thinking about it. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m not exactly necessary to the cause here, right now. Nobody’s going to notice if I step away from my post for…an hour, say?”
“I don’t—I mean, that would be—”
The Ensign held up her hands for peace. “Never let it be said I stood in the way of young love, right? Just make sure to clean up after yourselves.” She made a point of meeting Thom’s eye. Then she gave him a knowing wink, and left without further comment.
Once she was gone, Roan moved over to the console. She turned around and faced Thom. “She thought we were—that we came here to—”
Thom nodded. “Listen, it got her out of the way, right? Let her think that. For now, anyway. We need to focus.”
There was no arguing with that. Roan unrolled her minder on the console while Thom studied the controls that moved the big comms dishes outside.
Having the video file in their possession wasn’t enough. The Retreat controlled all network traffic on Niraya, and if they’d simply tried to share the video to everyone in the directory, the Retreat’s censoring software would have seen it instantly and stopped it from going out. No, they needed to broadcast it directly, with a signal strong enough to make sure it was picked up by every minder and display in Walden Crater.
The ground control station’s dishes were capable of sending a signal like that to distant planets. It was more than strong enough for their purpose.
Once they were sure Ehta would be far enough away that she wouldn’t see the dishes moving, Thom rearranged the array until it was pointing inward, toward the crater. The dishes groaned and struggled to realign themselves. One froze in place, still pointing straight upward. It didn’t matter—they still had more than enough signal strength.
Roan had the video ready to go. She turned on a microphone and got ready to introduce it. Before she started, though, she looked over at Thom, her eyes locked on his. She needed to know he was still sure. That he still wanted to do this.
It meant more trouble for him, more people to get angry with him. Thom was certain it wasn’t what Lanoe had intended for him to do, back when he’d made Thom his local liaison.
He nodded without hesitation. He reached over and tapped a virtual key to start the broadcast.
Roan stared at the microphone for a second as if she thought it might bite her. Then she began. “Um. Hello,” she said.
The one thing they’d forgotten to do was to think of how to introduce the video. What to say. In the end Roan kept it simple.
“This is going out to everybody. Everybody we can reach. What most of you know, I think, is that Niraya is under attack. What you don’t know is who’s attacking us. The video we’re about to show you is going to be tough to watch, but it’ll give you some information. What you do with that information is up to you.”
She tapped the face of her minder and the video started to play. She turned away from the display as if she didn’t want to see it again.
On the control board, every indicator was green. The signal was strong, and it would blanket the entire crater.
They let the video run to the end. Then they switched everything off. Roan rolled up her minder and held it tight in her hands.
“It’s done,” she said.
Zhang had been out in the tender all day, up above the clouds. When she returned she went straight to Lanoe and the two of them whispered together, for far longer than Maggs strictly liked.
He was under the Mylar tent, relaxing in a folding camp chair at the time. The moon’s gravity was pitiful but still, indolence was a habit he’d always cultivated.
“What do you think is going on?” Valk asked. The giant paced back and forth, stomping out from under the tent to get a better look at Lanoe and Zhang, then stomping back into the shelter. Rainwater dripped from him, big, fat drops falling slowly to the ground in the low gravity so that it looked like he was sweating through his suit. Proserpina looked up in annoyance as some of the rain got on her oh-so-fragile equipment. “Did she find something up there?”
“I’m sure,” Maggs said, letting his head roll from side to side, “they’ll inform us when they think we need to know.”
Proserpina frowned as she looked between him and Valk’s black polarized helmet. “Lanoe said something about a counterattack, earlier.”
“Maybe that’s it,” he said, and feigned a yawn. He looked over at Valk. “If you’re going to keep stalking back and forth like an exhibit at a zoo, perhaps you could do it somewhere other than my field of vision.”
Valk stopped pacing. Instead he folded his arms and bobbed up and down like he needed to urinate.
One of the great compensations for the dreariness of Naval service, Maggs had always found, was that your suit took care of such things without ever requiring you to think about them. He frowned at the big fool, then went back to his studied attempt at expending no energy whatsoever.
Alas, it was not to be. Lanoe and Zhang finished their tense discussions and together they came into the tent. “Time to pack up,” Lanoe told Proserpina.
“I think I might be getting somewhere,” she told him. “Can you give me another hour? I’ve almost got the power system in this thing figured out.”
Lanoe shook his head. “No, sorry. You’re going home.”
Valk stopped moving. He was as still as a very tall statue.
“We expected the enemy to send a massive force this way as soon as they realized their facility was offline,” Lanoe told them all. “I’ve had us camped out here so we would be ready to face that. Funny thing is, they didn’t take the bait.”
“Not on our timetable, anyway,” Zhang said.
Lanoe nodded. “They dispatched one of their destroyers this way. It’s moving slower than I thought it would, though. Being cautious. Most likely it’s scanning the moon right now, trying to figure out what happened, from about a half an AU out. At its current speed it’ll take a couple days to get here—days we don’t have. The main fleet is still moving toward Niraya, and they’ll arrive within a week. If we wait here for the destroyer to arrive, we put everything at risk.”
“I’m guessing that you’ve got a different plan,” Valk suggested.
“Sure,” Lanoe said. “We’re going to take the fight to them.”
For a moment the rain pattering on the tent was the only sound, as all of them considered what Lanoe’s words meant.
If no one else wanted to, Maggs figured he would be the one to make it clear. “We’re going to face down a destroyer w
ith no ground support. Out here about as far from Niraya as we can get. Just the four of us.”
“No,” Lanoe told him. “Three of us will head out there in our fighters. The fourth will take M. Derrow home in the tender. It means fighting this thing at less than full strength, but we can’t risk just leaving her here alone.”
“That’s very…kind of you,” Proserpina said.
“I need you back on Niraya, getting the engineering crews ready to build me those guns,” Lanoe told her. “Maggs,” he said. “I assume you want to be the one to take her back in the tender.”
Oh, now, that was rich. On the face of it, of course, it made sense. Everyone knew that he and Proserpina had a special sort of understanding, and maybe Lanoe just meant Maggs would want to make sure she was safe. Or, on the other hand, he could be impugning Maggs’s honor.
Well, it would certainly be the prudent thing to do, to simply say yes. The Navy handbook probably listed some carefully worked out equation on what the chances were of three fighters taking out a destroyer on their own, and the percentage was probably on the low side.
But if Maggs did the prudent thing now—
You’ve never been a coward, Maggsy, his father’s voice told him. Now’s your chance to show ’em all up.
Indeed.
“No,” he said. “Send Valk.”
“Me?” the big pilot asked.
“Yes, you,” Maggs told him. “You’ve already gotten your taste of glory. I haven’t fired so much as a shot in this fight yet. It’s my turn.”
Lanoe shrugged, as if it meant nothing to him either way. “Fine. We’ll get extra fuel and ammunition cartridges from the tender, then leave as soon as the fighters are ready. Valk, why don’t you help the engineer with her stuff?”
It was exceedingly hard to tell, but Maggs thought the big freak looked like he wanted to protest. Eventually, though, his shoulders sagged and he went to pick up one of the equipment boxes.
“Permission to say goodbye to the engineer, sir?” Maggs asked. “Seeing as I may not return?”
Lanoe just waved in assent. He was already headed off toward his FA.2. Maggs went over to Proserpina and put a hand on either of her shoulders. “No time for a proper farewell,” he told her.
She looked confused and scared. Which of course just meant she’d been paying attention.
He slid his hand down to her wrist, then summoned the display there. On the floating panel that appeared he tapped a few virtual keys until he’d established a radio frequency only the two of them could hear.
“Forgive me for taking the liberty,” he told her. “There’s something I need to say in private before I go—”
“Auster,” she said, “please don’t. I know you’re going to tell me you love me or something, but that feels like we’re never going to see each other again.”
He fought back the urge to laugh. He was fond of her, definitely, but they were hardly sweethearts after one very pleasant night together. “Listen to me,” he told her. “This is very important. I’ve been holding it back while the others were around, but you need to hear it and this might be my last chance.”
“Oh, all right, just say it,” she told him. Her eyes looked curiously hopeful.
Well, he’d already done the groundwork there. No need to go over the top. “The first time we met, back at that welcome ceremony at the Retreat,” he told her, “you said something to me.”
Her face clouded as she worked it through. “Back then? You mean the very first thing? That was some kind of request for evacuation or…or whatever. I was acting as the ranking Centrocor employee back then. I didn’t actually expect a serious response—”
“I understand. But you’ve seen something, now. Something of how bad our chances are. Listen to me, Proserpina. I don’t want to think what’s going to happen on Niraya if we all die out here. Valk on his own won’t be able to fight off the entire fleet. You have a chance, right now. Just a little bit of time. Start making that demand again—seriously this time.”
“I don’t know…”
“I do. There has to be a backup plan. Send a message to Centrocor and have them send enough ships to at least get you and your employees out of here.” He pulled her into an embrace. “I can’t stand the thought of you getting hurt.”
“Auster—we both know it won’t work. Centrocor has already written this planet off. Including all of its employees. They’ll never send that many ships all the way out here, at least not in time.”
“Convince them, then. Or if you don’t think you can rely on your employers—and if I’m being completely honest, I think you’re right about that—well. Get somebody else. Get cruise liners to come and pick you up. Call in some freight haulers, whatever it takes.”
“That would cost an enormous amount of money,” she pointed out.
“Money? Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.
Sometimes the biggest lies were the easiest to tell.
They’d broadcast the video.
“What do we do now?” Roan asked.
Thom could only shake his head. He pulled her close into a tight hug. He could feel her trembling. He was shaking, too.
“My whole life,” she said. “All those years at the Retreat. That’s gone, now,” she told him. “I know we did the right thing, but—”
“We did the right thing. That’s all that matters.”
She buried her face in his chest. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for helping me with this. I don’t think I could have done it alone.” He half-expected her to start crying. Instead, she just shook in his arms, as if she were cold. He rubbed her shoulders to warm her up, even though he knew that wasn’t what she needed, just then.
He never planned on kissing her. It wasn’t something he thought out. He just pressed his lips against the top of her head, and that felt as if he was still comforting her, as if it was part of the hug. When she turned her face to look up at him, he bent down and touched his lips to hers. That was all.
Because he was who he was, immediately he second-guessed it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe that wasn’t appropriate.”
“I didn’t push you away,” she told him. “Thom—I know, I mean. I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me, recently. I know you have feelings for me.”
He hadn’t gotten so far as to figure that out for himself. He knew he’d been drawn to her, but he hadn’t considered much more than occasionally holding her hand. “Maybe it’s like the Ensign said. You put two people together—”
“I’m not supposed to respond,” Roan told him, as if he hadn’t said anything. “As an aspirant, I’m not supposed to form attachments with people. It can cause problems with my studies. With my finding my path.”
“Oh,” he said.
“So I couldn’t respond. Or say anything, before. But now—I’ve turned away from the faith, haven’t I? I’m not an aspirant anymore.”
“Does that mean…?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what it means. Not yet. Maybe you should kiss me again. Maybe we can just try that.”
He leaned down and kissed her, more seriously this time. He felt her body move against his, felt her relaxing into the kiss. That seemed like a good sign. She put an arm around his neck, pulling him down, closer to her.
Thom might have come from a more sophisticated planet. He might have grown up in a decadent culture that didn’t practice much in the way of self-restraint. In point of fact, this wasn’t the first time he’d kissed someone. It was almost the first time, though, and he didn’t know how to proceed much better, he imagined, than Roan did.
Except he did know one thing. He knew Roan believed in honesty—whether she was a Transcendentalist or not, she’d always sought the truth.
Gently, he reached up and took her arm off his neck. Pulled his face back so he could look her in the eye. “Roan, you told me your life story. You don’t know mine,” he said.
“Later,” she said. “You can tell me later.�
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“No, you have to know. Once you hear it I don’t know if you’ll want to spend time with me anymore.”
She stared at him with sad eyes. “Thom, please.”
“I’m a murderer,” he told her.
That was enough to make her pull away. She moved to the far side of the room, her eyes never leaving his face. “What does that mean?” she said.
“It’s…complicated.”
“No,” she said. “No. You can’t say that and not explain.”
“I want to, I just…I don’t know how to tell you.”
She waited him out. Staring at him the whole time. So he forced himself to find the words and tell her the whole story. About his father and how he’d discovered why he’d been born. About how heavy the gun had felt in his hand and how he didn’t even need to think about it, about how easy it had been to pull the trigger, how he’d only started having doubts after the fact.
About how he’d run away, and how he’d tried to kill himself, and how he’d found he couldn’t. How he’d begged for Lanoe’s help.
About how he’d come to Niraya, and how he’d met her.
He wanted to say more. He wanted to talk about how much she’d come to mean to him, and how he was telling her this only because he trusted her, because he respected her and needed her to know the truth. Once he’d stated the plain facts, though, everything else just died on his tongue.
She didn’t look away. She didn’t scream at him, or cry, or anything like that.
Instead a calm as cold as ice came over her face. She looked almost bitterly amused. “You thought that now was the right time to tell me this.”
“It was him or me, Roan,” he said. “You have to see that.”
She twisted up her lips, as if with deep thought. “I have no idea what to do with this information,” she said.
Then she walked past him and out the door. He started to chase after her but she shook her head and glared at him until he backed off. She hurried down the stairs to her ground car and then she drove away.
Forsaken Skies Page 29