Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  My boots clanked on the webbed iron stairs and a slight breeze hit me as I reached the door, the overpressure exiting the craft. When I walked in, the inside looked too small to be part of the same beast. It sparkled, as if someone had replaced the interior recently, and it smelled almost sterile. Nine horizontal cryo pods dominated the passenger compartment in rows of three. Of course, I don’t know why we call it cryo. They haven’t used cold technology for stasis in several hundred years. Tradition, I guess. Whatever they were called, the pods were bracketed by six big, black comfortable chairs, three down each wall. I shook hands with the pilot, copilot, and doctor. I followed the same routine every time I got on something that flew. Call it superstition if you want, but I’m still alive, so I don’t care. Mostly the computer flew the ship, but they’d handle the duties inside of the solar system on takeoff before entering their own cryo pods. They couldn’t fly as well as a computer, but I think it made people more comfortable to know they had a person in charge. I know it did for me. The doctor would see us all safely sedated, then put herself under as well. I didn’t want to even think about how one would manage that.

  “Sir, I’ve got your body armor, in case you want to try it on before we take off,” said Hardy.

  “Is it a large regular?” I could jam into a medium-sized vest if I had to, but I preferred a little room to move, and the pauldrons on the medium sometimes pinched my shoulders.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’ll fit.” Then I glanced over. “Mother of planets, do you think you could have got something shinier?” The polymer breast plate practically glowed.

  “It’s brand new, sir.”

  “I can see that, Hardy. Don’t worry, that won’t stand out at all on the front.” I felt bad after I said it. Hardy resembled a dog that got caught taking a dump where it shouldn’t. Kid meant well. I pointed two lockers over to a worn set, the tan surface of the vest pockmarked, with a scar on the right side. “See, that’s what armor should look like.”

  A man stood up out of the farthest chair. “That’s mine, sir. Staff Sergeant McCann. Your PS.” PS. Personal Security. Another argument I lost with Serata. Basically my bodyguard, which I didn’t need for this trip. But if I had to have one, McCann looked the part. He stood at least six or seven centimeters shorter than me, but what he lacked in height he made up for in width. All shoulders and muscles, probably not a kilo of fat in his entire body.

  “McCann. Can I call you Mac?”

  “Yes, sir, I’d be glad if you did,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Mac. What in the galaxy are you drinking?” He had a liter-sized container holding something that looked like a cross between avocado and vomit.

  “Protein shake, sir. You want one?”

  I winced in disgust. “I’m going to pass, thanks.”

  “Gotta keep the weapons loaded, sir.” Mac slapped one of his biceps, the size of another man’s thigh.

  “I prefer my weapons to have longer range.” I pointed to the Bikoski 71 projectile rifle slung across his chest. Affectionately known as the Bitch. “You’re carrying the Bikoski instead of a pulse?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mac smiled proudly. “I don’t trust those pulse weapons. Get them wet and they go to shit.”

  “We shouldn’t be getting wet where we’re going,” I said.

  “You never know, sir. I’ve got this Bitch kitted out with every smart projectile in the inventory. Explosive, armor piercing, guided . . .”

  I liked the guy already. The pulse was sexier, lighter, and always a favorite on base where nobody shot anyone, but true grunts always wanted a Bitch. “You never know. Are you the general’s spy, or is it Hardy?” I said it half joking, but dumping it into the conversation so bluntly got the effect across.

  Mac shrugged. “Not me, sir. I’ve never met the general other than to say good morning when I passed him in the hall.”

  I nodded. “So Hardy, how often are you supposed to report in?”

  “Sir, I . . . sir . . .” Hardy’s face puckered, like he couldn’t decide if he should talk and forgot to breathe.

  I let the silence hang awkwardly.

  “Got your sidearm when you’re ready, sir,” Mac said after a moment. He held out a Mark 24 pistol and I took it. More of a decoration than anything else. I checked the chamber to make sure it was empty. Habit. I tossed it in my locker with my bag. I’d get it when we came out of cryo.

  Mac nodded at my box of liquor. “Is that from Ferra Three, sir?”

  “It is. Fifteen years old.”

  Mac whistled. “I’m going to like serving with you, sir.”

  “I hope you do. What’d you do to get stuck with this assignment?”

  “I volunteered, sir.”

  I looked at him more closely. “Really?”

  “Yes, sir. They were asking around HQ for someone with experience, and I jumped at it.”

  “What did you do at headquarters?” I asked.

  “Admin clerk, sir.”

  I stared harder, unable to tell if he was screwing with me or not. Everything about him screamed infantry. “You don’t look like an admin . . .”

  “I used to be infantry, sir. Switched over three years ago. Thought it would give me more time to spend with my wife.”

  I moved out of the way so Hardy could stow some gear. “Makes sense. How is that treating you?”

  “We got divorced last year,” he said.

  I nodded solemnly. “Sorry to hear it.”

  “It’s all good, sir.” He smiled with half his mouth.

  Our pilot poked her head out of the front compartment, short black hair over a golden face. She waited for me to make eye contact. “Sir, we did our checks before you boarded. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll get under way.”

  “Thanks. How long until we go cryo?”

  “About a day, sir. We can’t use the speed of the XT until we clear the fifth planet. Too much traffic.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s strap in, team. Long trip ahead, no sense putting it off.” I picked out one of the oversized seats and made myself comfortable. I fell asleep before we left the station.

  Chapter Three

  Coming out of stasis, I didn’t wake up exactly. More like I faded in. My seventeenth time, but who’s counting? They say you’re awake for a couple hours, but you’re not aware. They pull your breathing tube, then there’s light, and your eyes start to work, but you don’t process anything you see. I’m not sure what to compare it to, as it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever done. I had one colleague compare it to finishing a twenty-kilometer run, combined with a hangover and vertigo.

  In other words, it sucks.

  I looked at the big clock on the wall, the one with the date in bright red digital numbers. Four months, nineteen days since I went under.

  “Doc, I’m back,” I said, my voice raspy from non-use, my throat dry and sore from the tube I’d had shoved down it for months. I forced myself into a sitting position in my pod, letting some of the sticky orange mess slide down from my chest and shoulders.

  “Colonel. Good to see you.” She wore a white jumpsuit under a lab coat, her blonde hair pinned up in back, like she came out of the doctor catalogue. She’d have woken two days prior to prepare for the rest of us, so her hair wasn’t matted to her head in goop the way mine was. What little hair I had.

  She pressed a stethoscope to my chest and listened for a moment through my sticky stasis suit. “Sounds good. I’ll get your shot.”

  “No shot,” I said.

  “Sir, it will help with the nausea.”

  “I don’t need it.” I started to lever my legs out of the pod, then decided I needed another minute. “All I need is some biscuits and gravy.”

  “Sir, you will really feel better—”

  “I can’t believe they don’t teach you about biscuits and gravy in med school.”

  She put one hand on her hip and looked at me with annoyed doctor eyes.

  “I’m not taking a shot.” I
wasn’t kidding—biscuits and gravy really did work for me.

  “As the mission medical officer, I could order you.” She continued to glare at me, but I shrugged. She sighed. “You’re really not taking the shot, sir?”

  “Nope. Who else is up?”

  “Just the pilots. I brought you out before the other two passengers, per your orders.”

  “Good. Bring Mac out next. I’m going to get out of this slime suit and get a shower. Then I’m going to find some biscuits and gravy.”

  I knocked on the door to the flight deck before I walked in, fresh in my gravy afterglow. The copilot hastily stashed his reader. Maybe he thought I didn’t know the ship flew itself, or that I cared.

  “How far out are we?” I asked. I could see the white sun of the Cappa system, far away through the front viewport. I’d never seen another like it up close, so bright even from a distance. I wasn’t aware of another Class F star like it that supported life, but then again I didn’t really study such things.

  “Four days, eight hours,” said the pilot. I should have learned her name before we went into stasis, but I didn’t. I’m bad at things like that. “We have to go slow because of the traffic in the combat zone.”

  “Four days out? Why so far?” One to two days was normal.

  “I’m not sure, sir. The computer brought us out.” said the pilot. “It’s all automated.”

  “Sure. Does this happen often?” I asked.

  The pilot shrugged. “It happens, sir. Not often.”

  I shook my head slightly, and tried to refocus. “What’s the commo delay back to SPACECOM?”

  “Twenty-eight jumps, sir. Seventeen minutes, nineteen seconds,” said the copilot. That sounded about right—you can only jump so far, and every jump means a relay station for your comms. More relay stations, more delay.

  “Get me a line.” I sat in the jump seat. My stomach was fine, but my legs hadn’t fully recovered from the stasis.

  The pilot handed me a small tablet. “Do you need a private space, sir?”

  “No, there’s nothing secret. I just need to give a status and see if there’s new guidance.”

  I tapped out my message with my thumbs.

  General Serata, sir, we’re live, just over four days out from Cappa, no issues. Checking in for updated guidance.

  “Anything else, sir?” asked the pilot.

  “No. Just let me know when you get a response.” I headed back to the passenger compartment so that I could screw with Hardy as he came out of stasis. His first time. I kind of owed it to him.

  I got Serata’s response less than forty-five minutes later. I didn’t know the time at SPACECOM, but with nearly thirty-five minutes of delay for the messages, he’d answered quickly. I tried not to guess at what that meant when the copilot handed me a device.

  “Did you read it?”

  “No, sir. We knew it was for you when it came in, so we had it go straight to the guest reader.” I’d have read it if I were him. I couldn’t fly all the way out to the middle of nowhere carrying a relic of a colonel and not be curious. The copilot looked honest though, so I believed him.

  Butler: Four days out? You’re late. I expected to hear from you two days ago, and expected you to land tomorrow at the latest. Media is still sniffing around the investigation. It’s died down some, but they won’t let it go. I think someone on High Councilor Mallot’s staff keeps bringing it up to keep it alive. Get there and get this thing done. Make sure it’s tight. Serata.

  I swore silently. My gut reaction shouted to send him a note back, telling him that I had no control over the length of the flight. But he knew that, and even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t want to hear the excuse. Serata wanted everything now, regardless of the original timeline he gave you. He always had. I appreciated the heads-up about the media, but as an investigating officer I had the magic armor: “I’m sorry, I can’t comment due to an ongoing investigation.” Not that I expected the media out at Cappa Base. Well, maybe a field reporter, working down on the front, beaming news of the war to the rest of the galaxy. But I wouldn’t know—that was the kind of news I avoided back home.

  Chapter Four

  The inside of the hangar at Cappa Base remained much the way I remembered it, steel and aluminum painted in that light green color that said, “This place is too military to be painted white.” It looked like every hangar on every system base I’d ever flown into, with a high roof, polymer walls, and skid-free decking. I think one company had the contract for all of them, developed one model, then built it to scale depending on the requirement, invoking as little imagination as possible.

  I purposely hadn’t studied the new situation much. Just enough to refresh my memory. I wanted to go in with a clear head, and anything I read before cryo would have gone stale by the time we arrived anyway. That’s the trick with war. If you’re out for ninety days, you don’t know anything. Things change. So many people forget that. By the time you get back to civilization, everything you knew was already obsolete.

  I walked down the ramp of the XT and headed for the hangar exit toward the brigade headquarters, trusting Hardy to follow. He’d supervise getting our stuff off the ship. I heard Mac’s footsteps, hurrying to catch up. He wouldn’t say anything about me leaving him behind. He also wouldn’t let me walk off alone, even on a friendly base a couple hundred thousand kilometers from the nearest enemy. I slowed to let him catch up. He had a job to do too.

  “Colonel Butler?” A female voice. Definitely not Mac. I stopped and turned, waiting for the officer to close the last forty meters. She wore a shoulder rig for her pistol over her battle uniform. Broad shoulders, like a swimmer. She had brushed-copper skin, short, almost spiky dark hair, and no hat. No hats for anyone in an active hangar. I don’t know why.

  “Sir? I’m Major Alenda. On behalf of Colonel Stirling, I’d like to welcome you to Cappa Base.”

  “Nice to meet you, Alenda. You get stuck meeting me?” Stupid question, but I had to say something.

  “The colonel asked me to meet you, sir. Colonel Stirling is planetside. He won’t be back until late tonight.”

  An interesting turn. I didn’t know Stirling except by his reputation. Fast mover, a solid line officer who probably had a future. He knew when I’d be arriving and chose to be off base. Maybe he meant that to send me a message. Or perhaps he simply had a war to run and no time to play games with an asshole from headquarters.

  Probably a bit of both.

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t want to start my investigation without talking to him first.”

  “Yes, sir. The colonel anticipated that. You’re on his calendar right after breakfast tomorrow.”

  “If that fits. I don’t want to be a bother.” I followed the format of the lie. I insisted I didn’t want to be a bother, even though we all knew that I would be. A colonel from outside nosing around could never not be a bother.

  She seemed to get it. “If you want to follow me, sir, I’ll show you to your quarters. My people will see to your bags.” Three soldiers stood slightly out of earshot, waiting for orders.

  “Great.” I thought a silent prayer hoping they wouldn’t break my whiskey. “Is Sergeant McCann staying near me?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Alenda.

  Of course she’d made sure of that. “Lead on, then. So, what do you do here, Alenda?”

  “I work in the intelligence shop, sir. Now I’m your liaison.”

  I stopped, and Alenda stopped with me without a hitch. “My liaison?”

  “Yes, sir. Colonel Stirling wants me to assist you with your investigation. Set up meetings and interviews, get you whatever information you require from the command.”

  I hadn’t expected that, but I guess it didn’t deviate too much from the ordinary. Of course Stirling would want to speed my investigation along as quickly as possible. Having someone to keep an eye on me was just a bonus. “Interesting.” I said it as much to provoke a response as anything else.
<
br />   She smiled flatly, her lips thin, not taking the bait.

  I nodded. “Okay. But if we’re going to work together, we’ll get along a lot better if we don’t bullshit each other. We both know you work for Stirling, and we both know what that means.”

  Something flashed across her face for a moment, but calmed just as quickly. “Yes, sir. I work for Colonel Stirling, but I have no standing orders to report anything to do with the investigation.”

  “But that could change,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. My orders could change.”

  “Fair enough. What’s your first name, Alenda?”

  “Lexa, sir.”

  “Do you mind if I call you that?”

  “Of course, sir. That would be fine. Lexa, or Lex.”

  “Lex. One syllable is always good.” I’d try to remember to call her Lex, though the real reason I wanted her first name was so that I could pull her file later. If I had to have a spy, I wanted to know her history. I needed to get an idea of how much to trust her. Right now my gut said not much, but that reflected more on Stirling than her. He’d want a loyal person on that job. I’d have to work to break that down. Try to at least sway her to neutral, even if she’d never completely join my side.

  Lex glanced down at the ground, then back up. “Sir, I know this isn’t very professional to say, but . . .”

  “Go ahead,” I prompted.

  “Sir, I just want to say . . . it’s an honor to be working with you. I’ve read a lot of history—”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, cutting her off before it got embarrassing. I forced a smile. “We’ll see if you think it’s an honor after a few days.”

  I knew my quarters before we entered, but I didn’t tell Lex. She probably knew. They hadn’t changed the distinguished visitor suite since I’d been here last. The rooms glistened in freshly polished polymer and fake leather that had looked good fifteen years ago. It consisted of a sitting room and office combination, a sofa and coffee table along the left wall, a desk and food area along the right. The far wall held a large computer station and above that a digital window showed a view of the distant planet from the outside of the station, so real-looking that I might have been staring out actual glass. In truth, no living quarters were anywhere near external walls, and the station had no windows. An open set of double doors past the food area led into a bedroom, complete with my own shower and toilet. I didn’t mind the perk. As I grew older, I appreciated a toilet nearby at night more and more.