Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  Dedication

  For my mom, who was the first one to believe.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By Michael Mammay

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  I stepped off the shuttle in a shitty mood. Three straight days on a crowded ship with two jumps and no booze would do that. Nothing good ever came from answering a communicator in the middle of the night. But when a friend calls, you pick it up. When that friend happens to be the second most powerful man in the military . . . well, he’d have found a way to get through anyway.

  The buzzing crowd rushed past me in every direction, one out of ten in some kind of military uniform. Advertisements for armament and defense companies plastered every flat surface, all dazzling colors and lights. I ignored their messages and spotted a sign for ground transport. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I waded into the river of humanity.

  “Colonel Butler?” A lieutenant with a pressed uniform and a round Space Command patch on his sleeve stood at a respectful distance. Headquarters guy.

  I glanced down at my name tag. “Yeah.”

  “Sir, Lieutenant Hardy—”

  “General Serata’s aide?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir.” His eyes widened in his dark face, his bearing slipping for a second. Aides usually had the same look about them. Stiff and official. Young. Hardy was no different. “How was your flight, sir?”

  “It sucked.” Ferra Three to Gamma Six was one of the shortest interplanetary flights going, but that didn’t do much to recommend it. “How’d you find me?”

  “The general said to look for the colonel wearing the Student Command patch, sir. It stands out here.” He pointed to the triangular green-and-yellow patch on my shoulder, not so affectionately known as the Pyramid of Death.

  “That’s what he told you?”

  Hardy cut his eyes away for a second. “Not exactly, sir.”

  I laughed. “What did he say?”

  “He said find the angry, bald colonel with the STUCOM patch, sir.”

  I laughed again. Classic Serata. “Like that makes me easy to find. Half of us are bald, and we’re all angry.”

  Hardy looked at me without reacting. “Our car is just a couple hundred meters. Can I take your bag, sir?”

  “No, I’ve got it.”

  He paused and frowned, unsure what to do, but finally turned and led the way.

  The hover-car driver dropped us off at SPACECOM, in the reserved area. The big-time treatment. Serata was either in a real hurry to talk to me or buttering me up for something.

  Probably both.

  The building rose from the ground, huge, imposing steel and armo-glass, reflecting the reddish orange of the mid-morning sun. “Damn,” I said.

  “You’ve never been here before, sir?”

  “I always tried to avoid it.” I’d been in SPACECOM for thirty-seven straight years before my recent assignment to Student, twenty-four of those outside of cryo. Somehow I managed to stay in field units. Headquarters didn’t fit my style.

  “You served with the general before, didn’t you, sir?”

  I smiled. “That’s right.” Without a doubt Hardy had read my file, knew every assignment, but wanted to make conversation. I didn’t hold it against him. Serata and I served together three times, and they wrote books about at least two of them. Hardy wanted me to tell him a story about his boss. But that was not going to happen. I don’t tell those stories sober. “What’s the boss want to see me for?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. He didn’t say.” It didn’t matter. Even if he knew, Hardy wouldn’t tell me. Not one of Serata’s guys. The man inspired near fanatical loyalty. I should know. Why else would I be walking in the front entrance of SPACECOM three days after getting his call?

  We caught the command elevator, joining a skinny lieutenant colonel wearing infantry insignia. He nodded hello, glanced at my STUCOM patch, and then ignored me. Yeah. Fuck you too, buddy. I’d never met the man, but I knew him. Self-important Staff Guy.

  “I need five minutes with the boss,” Staff Guy said to Hardy. “I need to get his approval on this.” He had a large tablet with a white-and-red Level 4 Classification screen tucked under his arm. He mashed the button for the top floor.

  “Yes, sir,” said Hardy. “He has a meeting now, but I’ll get you in after lunch.”

  “This will only take a minute.” Staff Guy stared me down, daring me to say something. I didn’t bother. My days of dick-measuring contests passed a few years back.

  We arrived on the top floor and Staff Guy walked quickly, making sure he got in front of us. He put his hand against the scanner and the door to the command suite binged, then whooshed open. Serata, a big beast of a man, waited in the outer office talking to his secretary.

  “Sir, I need to get your approval—”

  “Carl! Brother!” Serata cut Staff Guy off, pushing past him. He engulfed my hand in his massive paw and we shook and half hugged in the way that male friends do.

  “Sir, I just need—”

  “Later, Canforra,” said Serata. “Come on, Carl.”

  I didn’t look back at Staff Guy—Canforra. I didn’t need to. I knew what his face looked like right then.

  “Leave your bag with Hardy. He’ll get you signed into the DVQ,” said Serata. DVQ—distinguished visitor quarters. They had really rolled out the first-class treatment for me. I glanced around for any clues to why, but saw nothing. Serata ushered me into his office, then pulled the door closed. A real wooden door. Who had a wooden door?

  “Damn, sir, nice place.” Huge floor-to-ceiling windows dominated the room on two sides; a giant wooden desk that looked like it could seat a dozen for dinner sat at least ten meters away from me. Memorabilia from old commands decorated the other two walls, and a framed picture from a decade back drew my eyes. Serata stood in the middle, three of us to each side of him on a snowy hill. Only four of us had lived more than a year past that photo.

  “Yeah, they treat me pretty good here.” He sat behind his desk and leaned back, interlacing his fingers behind his head. He had close-cropped silver hair, annoyingly thick for a guy several years older than me. “It’s good to see you, Carl.”

  “You too, sir.”

  “How’s STUCOM treating you?”

  I snorted. “I teach a few classes, escort VIPs around once in a while. Pretty taxing stuff. I’m not sure they know I’m gone. Good local booze, though.”

  “Ferra Three always did
have good whiskey.”

  “I brought a bottle.” I looked around. “Crap. Hardy took my bag.”

  Serata waved his hand. “We’ll get it later. How’s Sharon? She like it there?”

  “Hates it. Too cold.” My wife, Sharon, loved her warm weather.

  “Yeah. Lizzie always hated it there too.” He paused, finished with small talk, and the silence grew awkward.

  “That Canforra guy, he’s kind of an ass,” I said.

  Serata laughed. “Nah, he’s good. He just thinks everything is an emergency. The galaxy won’t implode if I don’t sign the deployment order for another hour.”

  “Sending more troops forward?” Living at STUCOM, I stayed out of touch. I could have followed things if I made an effort.

  I didn’t.

  “Just a brigade,” he said. “It will give us some extra combat power until we rotate one back. Make a little push out at Cappa Three.”

  “That’s not what you need me for, is it?” It seemed unlikely. He had better guys for that. Commanding a combat brigade didn’t really match my skill set.

  “No, I’d never ask you to do that.” His tone made it clear that he’d ask me to do something else. He could order me, but he wouldn’t. Not sure why I knew that. History, maybe. Instinct.

  “You want to stick the knife in now, sir?” You didn’t call someone out of semi-retirement and put him on an interplanetary flight to give him good news.

  Serata put his feet up on his desk, almost too casual. “Investigation. We’ve got a missing lieutenant.”

  I stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t have possibly needed me for something that simple. Then the other hammer dropped.

  “The lieutenant’s name is Mallot. As in High Councilor Mallot,” he clarified. “I know you don’t pay much attention to the news these days, but if you did, you’d have seen it.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “Yeah. Kid’s gone MIA out of Cappa Base,” he said.

  “On the front. What’s a councilor’s kid doing out there? I mean, it’s pretty quiet now, but still.”

  “Family tradition. Every son for four hundred years has served. A lot of daughters, too. Ever hear of Emily Eckstedt?”

  “The Angel of Death? Yes, sir, everyone’s heard of her.”

  “That was this kid’s great-grandmother’s sister.”

  “Wow. We sure this isn’t simply a case of a kid not wanting to stand in line for comm time to call home? Happens all the time.” A stupid question, but I needed the time to process things. Cappa Fucking Base.

  “Come on, Carl. You know we’ve done everything we can. And you know I wouldn’t ask you to go unless it was important. Not to Cappa. Not after—”

  “That was a long time ago, sir. I’m over that now,” I lied. “You want me to go to Cappa. How long a trip is that? Nine or ten months cryo each way? I’m supposed to retire in a year. That’s why they put me out to pasture at STUCOM.” I didn’t want to do it, but it wouldn’t be easy to turn down Serata. Not after everything we’d been through.

  “I know it.” Serata swung his feet down and walked to the window. Several low, boxy buildings lined the opposite side of a large, open square. “You can say no if you want. You’ve got as much cryo time as any colonel in the force. As much combat time, too. You’ve done your part.”

  I sighed. Telling me I could say no made it harder. Shit. “Sharon is going to pitch a fit. I’m already thirteen years younger than her because of all my time in cryo.”

  “So fifteen months of cryo pay, plus a bump in your retirement years. Buy her a treatment. They can take ten years off.” Serata smiled.

  “Fifteen months? It’s farther than that,” I said.

  “I’ve got you on the XT-57 on the way out. Less than five months.”

  “Damn.” I sat up in my chair. The Executive Transport 57 was the fastest transport in the military. There were maybe fifteen or twenty of them in the inventory, and they didn’t use them for transporting random colonels. “This really is important.”

  “Yeah. We need you there fast, before everyone forgets what happened,” he said.

  “Makes sense. How long has his unit been there?” Again, I was asking questions, but my mind was churning. He could get someone else. A simple mission. Lots of guys could do it . . .

  “Just under five months.” Serata paused. “I’ve got something for Sharon, too. Maybe she won’t be so pissed at me. To make it work, we’ll need to transfer you to SPACECOM. We’ll assign you to Fifth Space.”

  My breath caught. “Sir . . .”

  “Yeah.” He turned to face me. “It’s important. But it’s a good deal, too.”

  Fifth Space, based at Elenia Four. My first duty station. Sharon’s home planet. Even if I hadn’t planned to do it before, I couldn’t pass that up. My wife would kill me. “Fifth Space has a slot?”

  He drew his lips into a line and nodded. “They do now.”

  I swallowed, then nodded. “What do you need me to do, sir?”

  “Just go out there, poke around, file a report. Lot of Special Ops there, plus a line brigade. I need someone who speaks their language, but understands the importance of what I’m dealing with back here. That’s a pretty small subset.”

  “Yes, sir.” Most guys on the front wouldn’t give half a thought for a federation High Councilor. “How do you want the report to read?”

  Serata laughed. “I knew I had the right guy.” I wouldn’t falsify a report. He knew that. But you could find a dozen truths in any situation. I had no problem telling the one that helped the team.

  “The truth is, I don’t know what I want.” He sat on the edge of his mammoth desk.

  I paused to think about it, but didn’t find an answer. “I don’t get it, sir. Why me then?”

  “Because I have no idea what you’re going to find. It might be clean, it might be messy. And I need someone who knows which it is when he sees it.” He paused. “Here’s the deal: This has to be clean. I don’t care what you do, I don’t care who you have to burn. High Councilor Mallot has enough sway that he practically owns our budget, and he’s all over my ass. Find his kid, or find out what happened to him. This thing needs to be quick and tight. Airlock fucking tight.”

  I sat for a moment in silence. Serata pretended to look out the window, giving me time without any pressure. “Shit, sir. I hope this kid knows how much trouble he’s causing.”

  “He probably doesn’t . . .” His voice tailed off like maybe he had something else to say, but decided against it. Odd. Serata never did anything by accident.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Great. Important people will be watching this.”

  I stood. “It’s good, sir. You know me.”

  Serata chuckled. “Yeah, I do. That’s why I mentioned it.”

  I put my hands to my heart in a mock gesture of hurt. “I’ve got it, sir.”

  “Thanks, Carl.”

  “Yes, sir. Sharon will be ecstatic. Elenia Four, plus she gets rid of me for a year.”

  Serata smiled. “You want to call and tell her?”

  “Hell no, sir. I’m saving this one until I get home.”

  Chapter Two

  I stepped out into the hangar orbiting above Elenia Four and the headquarters for Fifth Space Command twenty days after I walked out of Serata’s office. People say you can’t move your entire life from one planet to another in two weeks. Those people haven’t had enough practice.

  I’d settled Sharon in a rented house, far from any military base but close to her sister and her aging parents. By settled, I mean I left her with a couple hundred containers of stuff that she had to unpack, but she never liked me getting in the way of decorating.

  That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  She didn’t make the trip to see me off. We had grown past that stage of our life together. We’d done it before more than once, the teary farewell, so we didn’t feel the need for a repeat performance. Easier to say our good-byes at home, in private. Always
better, if you ask me, because people frowned on you getting naked in the hangar.

  Instead I met up with Hardy, who I found somewhat lacking as a substitute. I hadn’t wanted him on the trip, but Serata insisted. I’m a colonel. Colonels don’t have aides, and I didn’t need one, but the boss thought the kid had potential and wanted to give him a chance to go to the front. Serata liked the kid. That meant something. For starters, it probably meant Serata had tasked him to report back on me.

  “Did you see the news, sir? There’s a lot of talk about our mission.” Hardy still wore pressed battle dress, ridiculous given our destination.

  “I try to avoid it.”

  “I don’t understand, sir. Don’t you need to know what’s going on?” He went to grab my baggage. Two bags and one box.

  “I know the mission, Hardy. Anything else just clouds things up.”

  Hardy paused and looked at me. When I didn’t explain, he grabbed the box, which clinked when it moved.

  “Sir . . . what—”

  “It’s whiskey, Hardy. Very good Ferra Three Whiskey.”

  “Sir, we’re not allowed to transport alcohol on a SPACECOM vehicle.”

  I stared at him. “What are they going to do? Make me retire? Wait, maybe they could send me to the front as punishment.”

  Hardy looked at me with that look people get when they aren’t sure if I’m serious. “Sir, the pilots won’t let you take it on.”

  “That’s why the first bottle’s for them,” I said.

  “Sir—”

  “Look, Hardy, you’re going to have to get used to something. I’m not General Serata. I do things . . . differently. I can get away with it, mostly because I’m not a general. I don’t have the disposition for it. Or the hair.” I paused. “Where was I?”

  “The liquor, sir.”

  “Right. Hardy, if we get in trouble for the liquor, I will swear that I ordered you, against your will, to load it on board. That you protested vehemently, to no avail. Can we move forward now?”

  “Yes, sir.” He almost smiled. He might make it. If I had to have an aide, he’d need to have a sense of humor.

  The XT-57 sat on a raised platform, a monster of a ship with a set of stairs leading up. Nobody would call it sleek, or sexy. More snub-nosed and blocky. Looks were deceiving, though: Shape didn’t matter much in space, only thrust and mass. That’s where the XT made money. She carried only six passengers and three crew, keeping the mass low. All engine and fuel cell. Ridiculously inefficient, unless you wanted to transport a colonel a long way in a hurry.