Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  “I don’t think you’ll have to. Maybe you do one training day. It should come back much, much quicker. I can’t say for sure, though, so don’t hold me to it.”

  “Shit.”

  “Sorry.” She sounded like she meant it.

  I sighed. “You know it never really goes away. Even with the neural training. They say it will. The doctors. They say that it gets better. It never does.”

  “I’m a doctor of robotics and orthopedics.” She looked directly at my eyes. “I’ve had hundreds of patients. I know.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. She probably did know. But then she couldn’t. Not really.

  “We’re working on ways to help,” she said. I opened my eyes and looked at her, skeptical. “Really,” she continued. “It’s very promising. It’s leading toward breakthroughs for double amputees. Triple, maybe.”

  “That’s great. How come I’ve never heard of it? I stay pretty well informed on robotics, as you might expect.”

  She nodded, pacing, full of energy. “It’s experimental still. But it’s going to work. It is working.”

  “That’s great,” I said. Anything that made neural training easier.

  “I could put your name in. See if you fit the test criteria. It could mean a serious upgrade in quality of life. Patients have shown complete dissipation of pain symptoms and a reduction of mental stress in sixty percent of cases.”

  I almost couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Those are good odds.” I didn’t mind a gamble. I’d bet half my pay on something if I thought I had a sixty percent chance of winning. But experimental medicine . . . it rubbed me the wrong way. “Is it okay if I think on it?”

  She stopped pacing and looked at me, like she hadn’t expected that answer for some reason. “Of course. Take your time.”

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “No, of course not. . . . well . . . to be honest, you’re the first person who didn’t immediately say yes.”

  “Don’t take it personally,” I said. “I’ve had a rough day, and I’m not thinking straight.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that.” She pulled over a rolling chair and sat. “I’m passionate about my work. You probably are too. But whatever the patient wants.”

  “Right now, the patient wants to get out of here and get back to work.” I tried to smile, hoping it didn’t look strained and gruesome.

  She laughed. “Typical combat officer.”

  “Seriously, Doc, when do you think I can go?”

  “You want my best medical advice, or my minimum standard that will ensure you don’t die?”

  I laughed for real this time.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “You should stay here a week. But I’d like you to at least stay here overnight. You’ve got some signs of a concussion, and we need to observe you.”

  I nodded. “Overnight I can do.”

  “Good. It won’t be a good night of sleep. We’ll have someone in every hour to check on you. But I’ll discharge you personally tomorrow. I want to be very clear that we don’t know for sure what kind of lingering effects you’re going to have regarding your previous injury. I think you should expect increased symptoms. I can prescribe something that will help, but if it gets too bad, or if you still feel like you need the meds after a few days, you should come back.”

  I nodded again. “I understand.”

  “Are you up to seeing visitors? Stirling and his people have wanted to come in but I’ve put them off. If you need some time, I can forbid them to see you. Medical reasons.”

  “I could use a couple hours. Maybe the night. Tell them they can come by in the morning?”

  “I can do that.” She stood to leave. “Don’t forget to talk to your man.”

  “I won’t. Hey, Doc?”

  She stopped by the door and looked back.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” she said. “Just doing my job.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I had only finished half my first cup of coffee when Stirling arrived at my quarters. “You look like shit,” he said.

  “Thanks. Rough night. Coffee?”

  “I’m good.” He didn’t sit down, which led me to believe it might be a short meeting. One could hope.

  “You learn anything about Sergeant Caena?” I asked.

  “That’s what you want to talk about? Carl, you were in the hospital yesterday.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  Stirling grunted what might have been a chuckle in another man. “I’m more concerned with the events leading to you being there than your actual time under care.”

  “Right.” I took a sip of coffee. “I’d probably be worried about that too if someone attacked someone else with an illegal weapon on my base.”

  “Don’t be so damn self-righteous, Carl. You know as well as I do that every base in the history of the galaxy has a black market. You yourself smuggled whiskey in. You think you’re the only one?”

  He had a valid point. I was being a bit of a dick, but having your head used as a piñata will do that. Not that I needed much of a push to be an asshole. “You find the guy?”

  “No. We’ll need to get a statement later, if that works for you.”

  “No? Aren’t there cameras? Door logs? It’s a closed station. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

  Stirling had the decency to look embarrassed. “We’re not really where we need to be with that type of thing. There are dark spots, and this guy used one.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Just send the investigating officer by. I’m going to take it easy here for a day or so. Doc says I had a minor concussion.”

  “Sure. What’s your gut tell you?”

  “It tells me not to mess with big guys carrying stun sticks.”

  Stirling stared at me, then decided to sit, taking the desk chair and spinning it around. So much for a short meeting.

  “Sorry,” I said, without meaning it. “It wasn’t a random occurrence, if that’s what you were asking. Guy was a pro. Dressed like a contractor, but definitely military. Fastest man I’ve ever seen.”

  Stirling nodded. “Your sergeant said the same thing.”

  I took another sip of coffee. “Can’t explain it. He just . . . moved.”

  He blew air out through pursed lips. “Unfortunately it’s hard to do a personnel screen for quick.”

  “Yeah, I hear you.” I thought about it for a moment. “Big guy. Almost two meters, at least a hundred kilos. Maybe a hundred and ten. Light skin, dark hair a little longer than military cut, no facial hair.” I thought some more. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “If nothing else, the size will rule a lot of people out,” he said.

  “You really doing a screen?”

  Stirling sighed. “Trying. With all the different contractors involved, it’s almost impossible to get an accurate picture. I’ve got less control of this place than one would think.”

  I grunted. “You’d think it would be easy, but it never is.” Despite it being a military base, contractors flew in on their own commercial ships, and getting an accurate manifest was always a struggle. When you asked their leadership for personnel numbers, they always claimed that giving an exact picture would hurt their ability to compete for future contracts, because somebody could try to undercut their next bid.

  “We’re giving it a go. Making everyone report all their names and show proof of their screening. We needed to do it anyway. Your incident gave me an excuse.”

  “Glad I could get my skull mashed in for the cause.”

  “You think this has something to do with your investigation?” asked Stirling.

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. Who do you think I pissed off?”

  “Everyone,” said Stirling. “But enough to assault you? That feels more personal. Who has the most to lose from your investigation?”

  “Honestly?” I thought about it for a minute. “Probably you. But you aren’t big enough.”r />
  “Be serious for a minute,” he said.

  “I am being serious. You asked who had the most to lose. I’ve got next to no authority over anyone in the hospital and less over anyone in Special Ops. That leaves your command as the ones with the most to lose from anything I find out.”

  He thought about it. “Guess I didn’t think of it like that.”

  “For the record, I don’t think you did it. And I don’t really suspect anyone in your command. Line soldiers aren’t wired that way. They aren’t blindly loyal enough where they’d attack a colonel. Not usually, anyway. Maybe at a lower level, like if it happened down on the planet. A guy protecting his buddy.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You know I had to send up the incident report. So you can expect that the boss has seen it by now.”

  “Serata?”

  Stirling nodded.

  “He send anything back?” I asked.

  “Not to me. You might want to check your messages.”

  “Okay, I will. Thanks.”

  “Carl . . . I want to put some guys on you.”

  “What, security? I’m good. I just went out without my man. And my pistol.” I tapped my sidearm, which I wore at my hip now.

  “Humor me,” he said. “If it makes you feel better, you can say it’s a favor to me. If something else happens to you and I didn’t put measures in place, I won’t need an investigation to get fired.”

  I tossed back the bottom of my coffee, suppressing a chuckle at his sense of self-preservation. “Fair point. Okay. Two soldiers, they report directly to me. Part of my team.”

  “Two teams of two, so they can go around the clock,” he said. “Twelve on and twelve off.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Have the senior person come see me first.”

  “He’s waiting outside with your PSO,” said Stirling.

  I laughed. “That’s convenient.”

  He shrugged. “I knew who I was dealing with. We’re both reasonable men.”

  “I’m not sure about that part, but in this case, I guess we are. Would you have Alenda come by? I want her to pull some satellite shots for me.”

  “Sure. You looking for something specific?”

  “I need to get a better look at what Karikov is doing down there. I’ve got to go back down and see him at some point, unless he agrees to come here.”

  “He won’t,” Stirling said.

  “I don’t think so either,” I said. “So I’m planning ahead.”

  “You think—”

  “I don’t think anything,” I said, cutting him off. “But if you’re looking for guys who inspire fanatical loyalty, where would you start?”

  “Probably the same place.” Stirling started to the door, then stopped. “Be careful.”

  I put my plastic tumbler back into the coffee dispenser and hit the button. “I plan on it.”

  Mac had the security detail stay outside the door. I suggested having them inside, but he insisted, so I let it go. Gutierrez and Guildsten. It paid to know the people protecting your ass by name. I promptly renamed them G One and G Two, with Gutierrez being G One on account of her seniority.

  Alenda sat in front of my terminal, feeding data to a giant screen she’d had wheeled in. “Where do you want to start, sir?” It was the first time she’d spoken in several minutes. She’d been quiet, since my attack. Shaken a little, I think.

  “I want everything,” I said. “Every satellite picture we’ve got of the area around Karikov’s base, in every spectrum we’ve got. I want infrared, I want chemical emissions, I want power usage. If we’ve got a sensor that picks it up, I want to see it. And I want to look at how it has changed over time. Let’s go back six months to start. We’ll know if we need to go back farther once we see what we’ve got.”

  It was a lot of data, but I had time. I’d put off interviewing the folks at the hospital for a couple of days.

  “I’ll start bringing them up, sir. If we’ve got multiple passes of the same sensor, I can parse it down so we only see one or two per month.”

  “Okay, but keep the rest handy.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Alenda looked at me as if to say, Really? She was too polite to actually say it though. “I get the feeling that you don’t trust me, sir. You’re keeping me in the dark.”

  I thought about my response for a moment. “I really don’t know what I’m looking for. I’ll know it when I see it.” I hoped that was true. I believed it though, and had a history of making it work. I often had no idea what I was doing until the moment when it fell together. I didn’t feel the need to mess with a successful formula.

  “Sir, I want to be a real part of this investigation.”

  I sighed. “Sit down, Lex.”

  She sat on the sofa, but remained stiff.

  “You are a critical part of this investigation.”

  “I fetch things, sir. I’m good at it, I get that. But I’m not really a part. You’re keeping most everything from me.”

  “I understand the situation you’re in, with your boss,” I said.

  “Sir . . .” she paused. “Sir, I . . .”

  “Go ahead. Say what you’ve got to say,” I said.

  “Sir, I don’t give a shit about my situation.” She paused. “I’m half in, and that doesn’t work. I want to be part of the team. For real. Help figure this out.”

  I sat silently, looking at her, considering. I decided she meant it. I couldn’t say why I got that impression, but I trusted my instincts. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay, sir?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “Okay, you’re in.” I would have said it even if I didn’t mean it. I needed her help, and if I pushed her away now I risked losing her. But once it came out of my mouth, it felt right. I meant it. I trusted her.

  She sat silently for a moment.

  “You good?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, sir. I just didn’t expect that to work.”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes things surprise you and you get what you ask for.”

  “Glad to be on your team, sir.”

  “Glad to have you,” I answered. “With that said, I still don’t know what I’m looking for in the data.”

  A laugh escaped her, then she choked it off, but laughed again at the awkward snort. “We’ll figure it out, sir.”

  Alenda busied herself talking to my computer terminal, calling up the data she needed to populate the big screen. She transferred the first piece, a high-resolution image of a series of buildings. I could barely make out the people in the image, but it did a great job of showing the overall layout of the area six months ago. I stored that in my mind while Alenda filed it for ready access on the computer. We’d be able to touch screen back through them later, as quickly as we wanted. Flip back and forth, looking for changes.

  She moved faster than me, so I had a bunch of maps in queue when she finished her task. “You want me to help you go through them, sir?”

  “First, I want you to get some information about the hospital folks without going through the hospital.”

  “Yes, sir.” The fact that she didn’t ask me how showed her professionalism. I had no idea. She’d figure it out.

  “I want to know where Colonel Elliot went on her trip planetside. And while you’re at it, I want to know what other doctors went with her. I also want to know if there were other trips, where Elliot didn’t go. In that case, I want to know what doctors went, and where.”

  “Yes, sir. You suspect Colonel Elliot?”

  “Lex, at this point, I suspect everybody. So we just chase leads and see what comes from it.”

  She pursed her lips. “We could look at their flight plans.”

  I punched my fist into my other hand. “Yes! Good idea. We could even follow the tracks, if we knew when they flew.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alenda’s face lit up. “We know about when Colonel Elliot went
, so that shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “She doesn’t own her own aircraft,” I mumbled, more to myself than to Lex.

  Alenda stopped. “She doesn’t?”

  “She doesn’t,” I said. “The flight squadron owns them. Does their maintenance . . .”

  “Keeps their flight logs,” said Alenda. “I’m on it.”

  “Good. I’m going to make more coffee and keep at these maps until they reveal to me the great secret they’re hiding.”

  Alenda stared.

  “Hey, it sounded good.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her tone suggested she didn’t believe me.

  General Serata’s message came up on my splash screen as soon as I authenticated. The brevity of it surprised me. The content surprised me more. I expected restrictions. At the very least, I expected some detailed instructions, after the attack on me.

  Carl. Read about the incident. I’ve increased your authorities over all SPACECOM assets in sector, up to and including command. Haven’t made that public, so Stirling won’t know until you exercise authority. Tell him to check the orders when you need to use them. That gives you flexibility to do what you need to do. Take care of business.

  Serata

  Shit. I didn’t know exactly how far the powers he granted me extended, but “including command” made me think I could fire Stirling and take over the base if I needed to.

  Shit.

  Shit shit shit.

  I couldn’t imagine a situation where you’d take an investigating officer and put him in charge, and I knew that wasn’t what Serata meant for me to do.

  So why give me the authority? If it had been anybody but Serata, I’d have thought he was setting me up. Give me the ability to fire Stirling knowing I wouldn’t use it, then if it turns out that Stirling really should have been fired, I’m responsible for not doing it. But Serata wouldn’t do that. Would he?

  Shit. He wouldn’t.

  I couldn’t start doubting the things I knew to be true. So if he wouldn’t do that, he had another reason. The only other reason would be that he thought I might need to use it. And that meant he had to be under more pressure than I knew.

  I touched the respond button on the screen.