Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  She looked at me a bit harder at that, studying me. “What are you going to do, sir?” Her question held no insolence, just curiosity.

  “I haven’t figured it out yet. But I’ll let you know after I do.” Maybe.

  She smiled. “Yes, sir. I’ll get the Ops and Intel brief set. Is after dinner okay? How’s the space lag hitting you?”

  “After dinner is fine,” I said. “I’m pretty beat down from the trip, but I want to power through. I’m going to spend the afternoon with this report, and I’ll know more when I see you again.”

  “Yes, sir.” She stood and let herself out, leaving me alone with the report.

  The investigation didn’t disappoint. Or rather, it did disappoint, if I’d held out any hope that I’d get anything useful from it. I got a few names, which I put into my device. People who’d seen Mallot loaded on the MEDEVAC. The Spec Ops team leader hadn’t filed a statement, which jumped out at me. It couldn’t be an oversight. Guys like Stirling didn’t miss things that simple. I’d need to check that. I had three screens of notes. Reminders.

  It was a start.

  The Ops and Intel brief provided a little more value. It got me up to date on the war. We weren’t winning, though we weren’t losing, either, so not much had changed. Nothing ever changed on Cappa.

  When humans discovered a new planet, it broke into two categories: Habitable and uninhabitable. If humans couldn’t live there in some comfort, the mining companies came in and did their thing from orbit, but that was about it. Nobody really thought about those uninhabitable planets again. Out of sight, out of mind. If a planet unsuitable for humans had indigenous life that affected mining, we could simply destroy it from space with XB25s. Planet busters. As long as it didn’t hurt the commercial value, nobody cared. Well, somebody cared. Just not enough to actually make a difference.

  If humans could live there, a planet became a potential colony. That changed the entire calculus. People cared a lot more about places they could see. Places where they lived. That’s where the military came in. We’d go in before the settlers and pacify the colony area. With our technological edge, that usually didn’t take long. But some planets pacified easier than others.

  We had to put boots on the ground. We couldn’t rely on fighting from orbit because the cost to the ecosystem made that untenable to use on a large scale in most cases. So we fought. Animals, mostly. Plants, sometimes. We did whatever we needed to do to make the planet safe for settlement and industry. If we could preserve a native species, we tried, even if we had to relocate them to areas without humans. People demanded it. But in the end, the needs of humans took precedence. I’m not here to judge whether that’s right or wrong. That’s just how things went.

  Until Cappa.

  We’d have probably left the planet alone completely, except for the silver. So much technology used silver, and none of the substitutes worked nearly as well. It sold for fifteen times the price of gold, and Cappa Three had huge veins of it. With that kind of money involved, politicians tended to change their views on things.

  If I come off as bitter about that, I’m not. Well, maybe a little. More tired than bitter. Tired of the bureaucratic bullshit, the messed-up command relationships, and the multiple agendas. We could have been done with the place years ago if we ever managed to get out of our own way.

  No chance of that.

  With that cheery thought, I pulled out a bottle of good imported whiskey and poured myself a drink into a fake glass tumbler. No real glass in the VIP suite. I drank it straight, finishing it in about five sips. I poured another. I needed to sleep. I expected the next day to be a long one.

  Chapter Seven

  I leaned on a polymer wall in the low light of the corridor outside the wide entrance to the hospital wing, half a hangover pressing on the backs of my eyes. Mac had come with me but hung back a step, blessedly silent on our walk over.

  “You wait out here,” I said.

  “You sure, sir?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want you to shoot anybody.” I half joked, but not totally. I had a feeling I might piss some people off. Even more than I usually do. I had no idea how they might react to that. Medical people saw the world differently from other soldiers. Better to keep Mac out of it.

  Mac looked at me as if he wasn’t sure I meant it.

  “Hold my weapon.” I unclipped my leg rig and handed him my pistol, holster and all. They’d make me disarm to go in the hospital anyway. Standard procedure. Probably something about having psych patients.

  “I’ll be right here,” said Mac.

  I walked through the hatch and up to the access control point, and waved the badge that Alenda gave me. I had no idea if they’d honor it, but I counted on my rank to get me access regardless. Either way, it worked, and a bored corporal waved me through.

  I passed through a second wide hatch and winced at the astringent smell. Why does every hospital have the same odor? It reeked of chemicals, not cleanliness, bringing back bad memories of previous hospital visits. I stopped for a moment and checked the direction signs on the white walls. I didn’t want to pause for too long, because if I did, someone would inevitably try to help me find something. A military organization hated an unescorted colonel the way nature abhorred a vacuum. I randomly took the hallway to the right. It turned out to be a good decision, as thirty meters later I found what I wanted. A door that said staff only.

  I pressed the button, half expecting that it wouldn’t let me in without a badge or biometric check. When it zipped open I walked through. I guess that meant I was staff. A dark-skinned female sergeant in a lab coat accosted me almost immediately.

  “Sir, can I help you find something? Patients aren’t allowed in this part of the facility.” She narrowed her eyes at me, her dark brows pinching together, but didn’t show any other overt hostility.

  “I have a meeting with Colonel Elliot. Is her office back here?”

  “Oh. Yes, sir. Down the hall, second right, then the office is on the left.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” During the whole exchange, I never stopped walking. I didn’t want her to decide she needed to show me the way. People didn’t expect colonels to lie to them, and I didn’t want to disillusion a perfectly good young sergeant.

  I found the office exactly where she said it would be and entered through the open door. A lieutenant sat at a metal desk perusing some sort of medical journal on a large reader. He looked up when I came in.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I’m here to see Colonel Elliot.” He glanced to the second door in the room, then back to me.

  “Can I ask what this is about?” He looked toward a monitor that I assumed had a schedule that wouldn’t show a meeting.

  “I just need to talk to her,” I said with a little wave of my hand, as if it were nothing. I kept walking to the door, pressed the button to open it, and went in, knocking on the frame after I’d stepped inside.

  “Sir! You can’t—” The lieutenant called from behind me, but his voice cut out when the door whooshed shut behind me.

  Colonel Mary Elliot looked up from a report to find me smiling at her. If my arrival surprised her, she didn’t let it show. I put her at mid-fifties maybe, her hair gracefully tinged with gray, lines tugging at the corners of her eyes and lips. She looked fit.

  “Doctor Elliot?” I asked. The question had a purpose. Sometimes hospital commanders were administrators, not doctors. My greeting would tell me quickly.

  “Yes,” she said, her expression still lacking visible emotion.

  “Hi. I’m Carl Butler. Just in from SPACECOM.”

  “Why are you here, Butler? We don’t have a meeting.” Direct and to the point. I liked it, despite the fact that it didn’t help me.

  “You see, Doc, I have this pain in my ankle.”

  Her eyes narrowed. No accounting for sense of humor. I got the feeling Elliot and I might not hit it off.

  She stood. “How did you get in here?”

 
; The door whooshed open behind me. “Ma’am, I’m so sorry.” The lieutenant from the outer office finally made it.

  She waved her hand, dismissing her assistant much in the same way I had on the way into her office.

  “I walked in,” I said, after the aide left. “You don’t have very good security.”

  “I didn’t think we needed it, this being a friendly base where people usually follow orders.” She smiled one of those hateful fake smiles that my wife always gave to people she didn’t like. Another man might have found it terrifying.

  I’m not that bright. I shrugged.

  “What can I do for you, Butler?” She walked around to the front of her desk and leaned back against it, half sitting on the edge, not offering her hand.

  “I’m here doing an investigation. A lieutenant disappeared.”

  She continued to look at me, not offering anything.

  “Mallot. Maybe you remember the case?” I prompted.

  “Doesn’t jump out at me.” She gave me a half smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Perhaps if you’d made an appointment, I’d have been able to pull the records.” Her body language said, Go to hell.

  Her tone said, “Fuck you.”

  “Your people didn’t want to give me a meeting. I didn’t feel like waiting.”

  She kept eye contact. “They’re doing their job protecting my time. We’ve had a lot of casualties lately, and I keep a surgery schedule along with my administrative duties.”

  “What’s your area of specialty?” I tried to steer us back onto a course that might lead to something other than her throwing me out.

  “Genetics and orthopedic robotics.” Her demeanor didn’t soften. I could have looked up that information on my own.

  “Interesting specialty for a place like this.”

  “It’s a command. We go where we’re told,” she said. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Absolutely. We go where we’re told. That’s why I’m here. Can we just cut through the crap and get to it?”

  She drew her lips into a thin line. “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to some of your people.” I leaned back against the wall next to the door, assumed as non-confrontational a demeanor as I could. I didn’t pose any risk. She could let me have access.

  She didn’t move. “Who do you need to see?”

  “Anyone who had access to incoming evac patients after twelve hundred on thirteen eleven 3943 and before oh six hundred on fourteen eleven 3943.”

  Her eyes narrowed again. “That’s over a hundred people. It would take a day to figure out everyone on shift at that time. And that’s almost five months ago. Some of them aren’t even here anymore.”

  “Of course. I understand it’s a big request. Obviously I’m happy to talk to those who are still here. And I can give you a couple days.”

  “That’s big of you.”

  I knew right then she wasn’t going to willingly help me out.

  “Why don’t you submit your questions? Leave them with Lieutenant Jacoby in the outer office. I’ll have one of my officers work on the list, then question everyone involved. We’ll get you a full report. We’ll put a rush on it. Give us ten days.” She gave me a flat smile hinting at self-satisfaction. Well played.

  “I really think it would be better if I talked to people directly.” I pushed myself up off of the wall, but didn’t move forward. Just preparing to get thrown out.

  “I’m sure you do,” she said. “And I’m sure I don’t care. SPACECOM has no authority here. But then, you know that already.”

  “Yes, I do. I was hoping we could do this the easy way.”

  She half grunted, half chuckled. “The easy way. That’s what this is?”

  “Yeah. We’ll see how it goes.” I walked forward and offered my hand. “Nice to meet you, Doctor.”

  “Nice to meet you too, Butler.” She shook my hand, matching my pressure, a nice firm grip. Her eyes didn’t leave mine.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said. “I can show myself out.”

  “I look forward to it.” The door opened when I touched the hand pad. “And Butler?”

  “Yeah?” I looked back over my shoulder.

  “Stay the fuck out of my hospital.”

  I kept walking without answering. Well, that went well.

  Chapter Eight

  Lex and Hardy met me soon after I got back to my office-room and I let Mac go to do his own thing for a bit. He’d materialize again if I decided to go anywhere.

  Hardy offered me a take-out box from the mess hall. I hadn’t realized lunch had passed. I hadn’t spent that much time at the hospital, but it took almost thirty minutes to walk from one side of the base to the other. Cappa Base sported a maze of mixed hallways and levels, accented with large multi-level open areas with nothing above them but the shell of the base. In some places the roof reached so high that it almost felt like a real world. I guess that made people forget they lived on what amounted to a giant spacecraft, orbiting a planet. I’m sure psychologists had done studies.

  I peeked inside the box Hardy gave me, then set it on my desk for later.

  “How did it go at the hospital, sir?” Lex kept her face neutral, and I couldn’t tell if she really wanted to know or already had a report and wanted confirmation.

  I settled on the former and I smiled. “About like you’d think it would.”

  She pursed her lips. “So what now, sir?”

  “Well, Elliot is a dead end.” I paused. I’d already thought through my next move, but I needed to convince myself I had it right.

  “I can reach out to some lower-level people there if you want, sir,” she offered.

  “Maybe.” I walked over and filled a tumbler with water, stalling so I could think. “Even if you get anywhere, I think Elliot would squash it before it helped. I think I need some high-level interference.” I hated to call on the boss, but Serata wanted the job done fast, and I didn’t see another way.

  “Yes, sir. Should I set up commo?”

  “No, Hardy can do it. Take this down.” Hardy had his device ready almost immediately. “Message to General Serata. Sir, ran into a roadblock with the hospital. Request you intervene at higher levels with MEDCOM to get me access to their personnel. The case is more complicated than anticipated, and I need their information. Respectfully, Butler.”

  “Got it sir,” said Hardy.

  “Read it back.” He had it right, and I sent him off to transmit and told him to wait for a response. I could have sent the message from the terminal in my room, but it gave him something to do.

  “What can I do, sir?” Lex meant well, I could see it in her face, but Stirling owned her career at this point, and forgetting that would be naïve. Still, I didn’t hold it against her. A major had to listen to her boss.

  “You have family back on Elenia Four?” I stalled for time while I thought about how much information to share.

  “Yes, sir. My wife is there along with our twins.”

  I smiled. “Nice. How old are they?”

  She returned the smile the way people do when they talk about their kids. “Four. A boy and a girl.”

  “That’s a good age,” I said. “What are their names?”

  “Allen and Ella.”

  “Good names.” I took a sip of my water, ready now. “See if you can set me up in operations. I want to look at the flights that day. Not just the record. I want to see the radar tracks. I want to see where every ship in the solar system went, and I want to compare it to where the records say they went.”

  “Yes, sir.” She didn’t even hesitate at the monstrous amount of data I asked for.

  “Start the data pull at noon on thirteen eleven and run it forward for twelve hours. How long until I can see it, do you think?”

  “Not sure, sir. But I’ll find out and let you know. Shouldn’t be long, though. I just need to clear it with the Ops chief, make sure she can spare the tech.”

  “Great. I’m going to eat my sandwic
h and then I’ll head to the Ops deck.”

  She let herself out, and I sat down and forced myself to eat half a sandwich while I waited.

  The Ops deck reminded me of every Ops deck everywhere: a three-story-high room somehow dark and light at the same time. Screens blared pictures and words to watching faces while forced air circulated, a little too cool for comfort. Despite the sense of activity, it was quiet, people communicating over small microphones, listening to headsets. A glance at the big screens up top told me the war remained calm for the moment, but even in the middle of an attack the Ops center would keep control. Veteran outfits didn’t panic unless something truly unheard of happened, and even then, only for a moment.

  I could almost imagine the night the councilor’s kid got hit. They’d have received the name, maybe recognized it, swore . . . and then driven on with the mission.

  I waved to the Ops chief, a lieutenant colonel, letting her know I’d entered her domain. Courtesy. We’d met the night prior, so I didn’t feel the need to introduce myself again, but she needed to know I’d come in. I joined Lex by an operator seated in a rolling chair in front of two screens in a row of a dozen. Soldiers occupied half the seats, leaving plenty of places to sit.

  “Sir, this is Sergeant Sandoval,” said Lex. “He can pull up the data you need.” A short, thin, dark-haired man stood, assuming a rough position of attention. Nervous. He probably didn’t brief many colonels, especially from outside.

  “Good to meet you, Sandoval. Relax.” I offered him my hand and he took it with a weak grip. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Here, sir, or overall?”

  I recognized his accent. “Both,” I said. “You from Elenia Four?”

  “Yes, sir.” He smiled. “I got the accent good.”

  “My wife’s from there.” Any bit of common ground would help him relax.

  “Really, sir? What part?”

  “Near Lake Mobile.”

  “Oh, wow. I’m not too far from there. Five hundred klicks, maybe.” Always funny how time spent among the stars can distort your idea of near and far. “As for your question, sir, I’ve been here about nine months. Been doing this job at some level for five years.”