Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  “Don’t take me the wrong way,” I continued. “I’m not bitter about it. It’s much better that they care than if they didn’t. It’s still going to happen though, so you may as well prepare yourself.”

  Hardy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Plus, it might get you laid, so you know, the good with the bad. Either way, you want to have a go-to response. Something respectful, but dismissive, for those times you don’t want to talk. Something that tells people that it’s not a subject for discussion. Remember, it’s your experience. You don’t owe it to anybody. If you want to talk about it, talk about it. But don’t feel obligated. The people who really care about you will get it.”

  Hardy looked confused. I hadn’t meant to get into the subject so deeply. It just came up, because it struck close to home for me. But I’m glad it did come up. He’d understand when it happened, and think back to this conversation.

  “Don’t worry about it too much,” I said. “Trust me. You want a line that answers ‘how did it happen?’ Something like, ‘I was just doing my job.’ It’s not a lie. You were doing your job.”

  He nodded again, recognition on his face this time. “I get it, sir.”

  “You will. For now, get yourself well. Be glad they aren’t giving you a robot hip.”

  “No, sir. No robotics. Just a polymer plate and two rods and a bunch of other hardware.”

  “I’ll let you get some rest. You’re going to need it for that physical therapy.”

  “Thanks, sir. For everything.”

  “Don’t mention it. I got you blown up. I owe you.”

  Karen Plazz ambushed me outside the hospital. Not that an unarmed fifty-kilo woman can truly ambush a man with three armed guards. She stood there, leaning against the wall, and glared at me like I’d done something wrong.

  “Hello.” I smiled, trying to defuse whatever it was.

  “You’ve been avoiding my calls,” she said.

  “I haven’t been avoiding them. I haven’t received them.” I stopped, and G One and G Two stopped with me until Mac gestured for them to give me some space.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Exactly what I said. What calls?”

  “I called the extension he gave me. Did you check your messages?”

  I nodded. “Every day.”

  “That bastard gave me a fake number.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “What?” She gave me a fake innocent look that made me almost laugh.

  “Who was the bastard who gave you the fake number?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “Well, you know, you really have to be careful when you take information from strangers,” I said.

  “You’re not funny, you know.” She kind of half scowled. “You think you are, but you aren’t. It doesn’t matter. Clearly he was protecting you.”

  I made my eyes big in fake surprise. “Protecting me from what? Am I in danger?”

  “I heard that maybe you are. That’s why I called.”

  “Huh. Who knew?”

  “So what can you tell me about the attack?” asked Plazz.

  I shrugged. “Certainly nothing you don’t know.”

  “But you’re in danger.”

  I looked around suspiciously. “Am I?”

  “You have three armed soldiers walking with you.”

  I glanced over at my guards. “Yeah, but I don’t think they’re that dangerous.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “I really am.”

  “Come on, Carl. I thought we were working together here.”

  “I’d love to help you, Karen, but I’ve got to keep a low profile.”

  “Can I print that?”

  I sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Come on, give me one thing. I won’t use your name.”

  “I really can’t.”

  “Nothing? I’ll put away my recorder.” She made a dramatic gesture of turning off her device. I’m not sure it was actually on.

  “I don’t know. Give me a day. If I can come up with something that people won’t trace back to me, I’ll give you a line.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not very helpful, you know.”

  “I don’t think you’re the first person to say that.”

  She glared again, but then she started laughing. “Asshole.”

  “You’re definitely not the first one to say that.”

  Another laugh. “You seem to have fully recovered from your attack.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  I smiled. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I checked on Hardy the next morning but they had already shuffled him off to therapy, and I don’t like to hear people screaming, so I set up in an office in the hospital and prepared for my hours of interviews.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Mac, as he set a chair for himself in the corner of the room.

  “Someone has to stay in the room with you, sir.”

  “No. No way, Mac. What do you think, someone is going to try to kill me here in the hospital?”

  Mac’s look said he didn’t rule it out.

  “Look, you wait outside. If someone does kill me, you have my permission to shoot him when he comes out.”

  He thought about it.

  “Just go,” I said. “And don’t intimidate people on the way in, either. I need them to open up.”

  “Roger, sir.” He said it in that way non-coms talk when they’re going to ignore you.

  “I’m going to ask people when they come in, you know. They’re going to tell me if you gave them shit.”

  “Roger, sir.” He didn’t care. He and the two Gs were starting to take their job too seriously, but I didn’t really want to tell the people guarding me to relax, either.

  Fifteen interviews later, I regretted my decision to not let Mac rough some people up a little bit. Fifteen sets of questions, fifteen sets of the same answers. No deviation. I’m not a natural conspiracy theorist, but someone had rehearsed them. I tried asking the questions in different ways, making them open-ended, but I got the same pat responses. It frustrated me at first, then I got angry. But we were in the room without any witnesses, so nobody could prove that. I apologized. Sort of.

  “I need a break,” I said as I walked out the door. I’d gotten a little ahead of schedule when I gave up hope on the last few interviews. “I’m going to the latrine. I don’t need a guard.”

  Mac nodded to G Two, who got up and followed me. Junior man gets to guard the toilet, I guess.

  “You really don’t have to come in,” I told him, when we neared the door.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, before ignoring me and following me anyway. That was the thing with soldiers. You could give them orders, but in the end they’d always listen to their sergeants. Survival mechanism.

  “Let’s go see Hardy.” I had another fifteen minutes to spare before I needed to start interviewing again. G Two fell in beside me and slightly behind. He didn’t talk much.

  “How did the questioning go, sir?” Hardy asked when I got to his room.

  “Complete waste of time. How was physical therapy?”

  “It was tough, sir.”

  I didn’t believe him. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered.

  “I did find out something about the doctors who went planetside,” he said.

  I stopped wishing pain on him. Okay, I never really wished pain on him. Not too much. “What did you find out? How?”

  “Elizabeth told me—”

  “Who’s Elizabeth?” I interrupted.

  “Sorry, sir. Lieutenant Morietta. The PT.”

  Of course. “Right, sorry. Continue.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s the subject of a lot of discussion here with the staff. The doctors who go down on the trips, some of them don’t really have jobs up here, I guess.”

  I nodded, not
wanting to interrupt.

  “Doctor Emory kind of creeps everyone out. He’s a geneticist, and he works in a secured—”

  “He’s a what?”

  “A geneticist, sir.”

  “What the hell do they need a geneticist, for?”

  “Not a geneticist. Two of them. And nobody knows, sir. I guess it’s supposed to be secret, but some of the staff know. Other doctors talk. There are some weird theories.”

  I quirked my eyebrows. “Such as?”

  “Well some of them aren’t weird. Research is the most rational.”

  “Yeah, great. What’s the most irrational?”

  Hardy narrowed his eyes for a moment. “I guess that they are genetically creating a super soldier who’s better adapted to planetary warfare?”

  “Sounds like something you’d see in a holo. And not a good one.”

  “Yes, sir. Nobody really buys that one. But the stories are out there. I can get more.”

  “I think I can too.” I couldn’t believe I’d missed that line of questioning.

  I got set back up in the office for the next interview and checked my list. Captain Tracotti. Good. I was glad it was an officer, because I wouldn’t feel as bad about beating him up.

  “Have a seat, Tracotti. Is it Doctor?”

  “Yes, sir.” I could have imagined it, but he might have looked down his nose at me a little. I just assume it with doctors, I think. I kind of wanted to punch him in the face, just on principle. He’d have less nose to look down.

  “What’s your specialty?” I asked instead of hitting him.

  “Ortho, sir. Wrists and hands are my subspecialty. I was told there’s a sworn statement I need to fill out?”

  “There might be. I want to ask you a couple of questions, see what kind of answers you have, and if there’s anything I need for the investigation, we’ll make it official and put it on paper.”

  “Sounds good, sir.”

  “Do you know a doctor named McDaniel?” I asked.

  Tracotti started to answer, then stopped and sat silent for a second, narrowing his eyes. He pushed his too-long hair back out of his face. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “It’s an easy question. Do you know McDaniel?” I tried to make my voice extra condescending.

  “Yes, sir. I don’t see what—”

  “What’s his specialty?”

  “Ortho and robotics, sir.”

  “Oh, like Doctor Elliot.”

  He scrunched up his face. “Yes, sir. Actually, Doctor McDaniel runs the service and Doctor Elliot, she jumps in when she has time she can spare away from her administrative duties.”

  “That makes sense.” I smiled, trying to put him at ease. More trying to send conflicting messages. “You know Doctor Jones? Or Emory?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Genetics, I think, sir. I don’t see them around the hospital much, just back at quarters or in the mess.” He fidgeted in his seat, kept looking down at his hands, folded on the table.

  “But they work genetics.”

  “Yes, sir. I think so. We don’t share any patients. We haven’t yet, at least.”

  “Would you ever share a patient with a geneticist?”

  “I haven’t yet, sir, but I’ve only been practicing a few years.”

  “Thanks. Did you see anything unusual on the night of thirteen eleven 3943?”

  “No, sir. It was a normal night.”

  “Great.” Same answer as everyone else. “Do you know Doctor Kwan?”

  “Yes, sir. She works with me in Ortho. She’s mostly lower body.”

  I made a fake note on my device. “What about Doctor Kepple?”

  “I’ve heard the name, sir. Sorry, I don’t know him personally.”

  “Thanks, Doctor. You’ve been very helpful.”

  He glanced around, as if looking for something. “I don’t need to do a statement?”

  I gave him a cold smile. “No, it’s pretty clear that nobody saw anything. It’s a formality at this point.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I brought in four more people. I didn’t question the enlisted folks much. Just made conversation. But I asked a nurse and a doctor the same questions as Tracotti, and got similar answers. I learned that Kepple was a psych.

  I stepped outside. “Interviews are over. You can send the rest of the people away.”

  “All of them, sir?” asked Mac.

  “Yeah. I’m done. I’ve got what I need. You stay here. G Two, you come with me.”

  “Sir, where are you going?” asked Mac.

  I grinned. “One more piece of business.”

  I walked through Elliot’s outer office and past her assistant without stopping. “G, if that guy moves, I want you to shoot him.”

  “Yes, sir.” G set himself into a ready position by the door.

  The lieutenant at the desk stammered, but couldn’t form words.

  “G, I’m joking. Just don’t let him bother us. Don’t let anybody bother us.”

  “Roger, sir.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes had gone large, but he kept his seat. I’d either intimidated him or confused him. I could live with either case.

  “How come you have geneticists on your staff?” I pulled the door closed behind me.

  “Good afternoon to you, too.” Elliot put half of a sandwich down on a plastic tray on her desk. Something healthy-looking on wheat bread. She picked up her water and took a sip. Buying time, thinking through my question.

  “You didn’t answer,” I said.

  She glared at me, and the look made me glad she didn’t have a weapon. “I don’t have to answer, especially when you barge in without as much as knocking.”

  “You do have to answer. SPACECOM worked it out with MEDCOM.”

  She stared for a moment. “That’s not the order I got. The order I got said that I should cooperate with you where possible, and where it didn’t excessively hinder the mission. If you want to make an appointment, I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “So you can prepare your answers like the rest of your command?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She gave me a flat smile.

  “Of course not.” I had to walk a line here. I couldn’t directly accuse her, because if I ended up using her statement she could say I badgered her into it. “What do you know about bringing Cappans up off the planet on one of your MEDEVACs?”

  She looked like she was about to say something, but she stopped. She picked up her water and had a sip. “Who told you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She inhaled deeply. “Probably not.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  She sat for a moment and composed herself. “It was a mistake. The med crew loaded them. Once we figured out what they’d done, we followed the correct protocols to contain it.”

  “Where are the Cappans now?”

  “Incinerated. Per the protocol. Everyone and everything that touched them went into quarantine, just as if they’d had contact planetside.”

  “And you didn’t report it,” I said.

  “I started an investigation. Then three days later the MEDEVAC involved got shot down, killing everyone on board. I could have continued the investigation, but I didn’t want to sully the reputation of a pilot who otherwise served honorably.”

  I thought about her answer for a moment. Something in the way she said it rang false. Like she’d rehearsed it. She could have. She had to have known that someone would question it one day. Secrets always get out on a military base. I didn’t know how to press her though, without coming off like a total asshole. The pilot was dead, that much I knew.

  I nodded after a moment. “That makes sense. No need to drag him into it.”

  “But you’ll still put it in your report,” she said.

  “I might. Depends on what else I learn and how it applies. I can hardly avoid the fact that there were Cappans on the same MEDEVAC tha
t the missing lieutenant flew on.”

  She paused for a moment, then nodded. “The lieutenant never arrived here.”

  “How is that possible? They were on the same ship.”

  “Were they? One of my people told you that?” She considered it. “I think not.” She sipped her water again, this time watching me over the rim of her cup.

  I sat down, opened my device, and pretended to read something. I didn’t like how she’d reversed the direction of the questioning. I didn’t want to give her the impression that I got the information planetside.

  “How was your meeting with Karikov?” I asked.

  She stopped moving, her glass halfway to the table, then she set it down gently, almost arranging it on the surface of her desk. “He’s well.”

  She’d decided not to lie about meeting him. I didn’t know what that meant. Maybe she couldn’t think of anything quick enough. “What was the visit about?”

  She looked at me without emotion. “He’s a patient. The nature of our discussion is private.”

  “So you were there to see him medically.”

  “Yes, and to check on his clinic.”

  “Special Ops clinics don’t fall under MEDCOM.”

  She pulled her lips into a flat line. “They don’t. But we have an agreement, Karikov and I, where I give him courtesy inspections and help fill any supply shortages they might have. It’s in writing, if you want to see it.”

  I fixed her eyes. “Interesting. Is that common?”

  “I don’t concern myself with what’s common. I do what I think is right for the mission. This is right.” She stared back at me, unblinking, as if daring me to challenge her.

  I glanced back down at my notes, stalling. I considered asking what the geneticists did planetside, but decided against it. She’d recovered her balance too quickly with my other lines of questioning. She’d have a prepared answer for that, as well. I needed to keep something in reserve. Dig some more. “I’d like to get you on the record with a sworn statement.”

  “Given your questions here, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “No? MEDCOM said to cooperate.”

  “And now I find it outside my ability to accommodate.”

  I nodded. “So I guess I send them a formal request, complete with the reasons why I feel that you need to be part of the investigation. With all the details.”