Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  She glared for a moment, then relaxed. “I’m not going to answer questions about the Cappans. Not in a statement. I didn’t report it, and that’s a clear violation. If you want to charge me, charge me, and I’ll speak with my attorney before talking to you.”

  “I see.” I sat silently for a moment, tapping my finger on the screen of my device. “What if I agree not to ask about the Cappans?”

  She narrowed her eyes, furrows deepening on either side of the top of her nose. “What would you ask, then? I don’t see what I can provide that you don’t already have.”

  “Background. The subject of your visits to the planet. Why you think they’re important.”

  She studied me. “I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

  I gave her my most innocent look. “You could just trust me.”

  She half laughed, half snorted, which made me smirk too. “I think there are a lot of things more likely than either one of us trusting the other,” she said.

  I shrugged. “What do you have to lose? If you don’t like the result, you don’t sign the statement.”

  “And if I don’t like the questions, I report you for threatening the life of my assistant.”

  I smiled. “I hardly think that happened. Clearly a misunderstanding.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “What’s your interest in Karikov?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The fact that when I tried to visit him someone blew up my convoy?”

  She frowned. “Surely you don’t think he did it.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. I’ve never met the man. That’s why I asked.”

  She thought about it. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “See, that’s something I didn’t know.” It was thin, but I didn’t have much to work with. “What makes you say that?”

  She thought some more. “Karikov cares about soldiers. He wants what’s best for them. Having them attacked . . . no. I don’t see it. Is that all?”

  “One last thing. How long is your tour? Standard is twelve months, right?”

  She nodded. “That’s right. I extended for six months. I’ve been here thirteen so far.”

  I stood. “Thanks. I appreciate your time.”

  “And I appreciate your people behaving in my hospital. I let them carry weapons, but not so they can threaten my staff.”

  “I’ll talk to them about that,” I said. “Let’s go, G.” G Two followed me out the hatch of the outer office and into the corridor.

  I thought through what I learned in the exchange. Elliot didn’t think Karikov would have us ambushed. I wasn’t sure about that, but I did believe that she believed it, and she’d met the man in person, which gave her a perspective I didn’t have. But I still didn’t trust her to tell me the truth, which colored my thinking about everything she told me, casting the matter right back into doubt. Too, she knew about the Cappans and hadn’t reported it, which was something. But not much. She had a plausible reason for her actions.

  I needed to find a new way to approach the problem.

  “What if we just dropped in on Karikov?”

  “I thought Chu got you a call scheduled, sir,” said Alenda. She sat on the sofa, reading something on a tablet. I think she’d gotten a haircut, shorter and spiky, though I couldn’t say for sure it hadn’t been that way the previous day.

  “She did. She messaged me an hour ago to set it up for tomorrow night. But what if I didn’t wait? We could get in ships and fly in. Get off at his base.”

  She lowered her tablet to her lap. “To what end, sir?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “You’ve booked a call.”

  “Right. But you can’t read somebody over the comm . . . I’d get a lot more talking to him face-to-face. Besides, I don’t think he’s really going to take the call. I think he’s just putting me off another day.”

  “I’ll take that bet, sir,” she said.

  “You’re on,” I answered. “Anyway, I’m thinking it might be a good plan.”

  “We don’t have any authority there,” said Alenda.

  “I know we don’t. But it doesn’t matter. It would let me put this thing to rest.” It started out as a lark, but the idea started to grow on me.

  “You still need to find the lieutenant, sir.” She looked at me, her head tilted sideways.

  “Right.” I stood up and started pacing. “But Karikov knows where he is.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but let me . . . How do you know he knows?”

  “People keep asking me questions like that,” I said.

  “Like what, sir?”

  “Ones I can’t answer. I don’t know how I know, I just know.”

  “That’s thin, sir. Begging your pardon.”

  “You can stop begging my pardon. Just say what’s on your mind. And you’re right. It’s thin. Really fucking thin. But I know Karikov knows.” I didn’t really know, but I felt like I did. If I was Karikov and it happened in my unit, I’d know.

  Alenda sat without speaking, which was probably smart, because if she dumped on my intuition again I might have thrown something at her.

  “We could go at first light and be back in time for lunch,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. Sir . . . I don’t think I’ll be able to set that up without you talking to Colonel Stirling. If I ask, the answer is going to be no.”

  I stopped and looked at her, then nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll go talk to him.”

  She grabbed up her tablet and stood to go. “If you’re going planetside, I want to go with you, sir.”

  I turned and looked at her. “Why?”

  “If that’s where the answers are, I want to be there. Plus you don’t have Hardy available.”

  “The reason I don’t have Hardy available is that I got him blown up. I’m not making that mistake again.”

  “You’re taking Mac.”

  “That’s his job.” I knew it was bullshit when I said it.

  “It’s all of our jobs, sir.”

  I started to snap off another answer, but held myself. “I’ll think on it.”

  She stood silently for a moment, breathing through her nose, locking her eyes with mine. I think we both knew I was lying. “When do you want to go, sir?”

  “Tomorrow morning.” Just like that I decided. I was going.

  Stirling was in his office when I arrived. “Carl. What can I do for you?”

  “I need a couple ships,” I said.

  “Sure. What for?”

  “I want to drop in on Karikov.”

  He stopped dead still, looking almost comical in his reaction, like if he had been drinking something he’d have spit it out. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” he said, after a moment.

  Understatement.

  “Why not?”

  He looked down for a moment, then back at me. “I think you have to consider the possibility that he had something to do with the attack on our convoy. Not that he ordered it, but that he knew about it.”

  “Why do you say that?” I sat on the edge of his table, keeping my feet on the floor. I agreed with him, but I wanted to hear his reasoning.

  “The satellite stuff. Something happened there.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath, then let it out. “I still don’t know for sure. But it wasn’t a routine outage.”

  “Interesting. How sure are you?”

  “Sure enough,” he said.

  “Shit.”

  He nodded. “Exactly. So you see why I’m hesitant.”

  “I still need to go. We’ll simply have to take precautions.”

  “Like what? You’re going to drop in with a couple of troop ships. You don’t have much protection there.”

  “What are they going to do, shoot us down?” After the words left my mouth, I considered the possibility for the first time.

  “The Cappans own the airspace now. We clear all flights through their control once we drop in below eig
ht thousand meters.”

  I met his eyes. “And you think they’ll do something?”

  He shrugged. “They shouldn’t. But then, they shouldn’t have attacked your convoy, either. The thing is, I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I don’t like reacting.”

  I nodded absently, thinking. He was right. Reacting means your enemy is dictating what you do, and that’s never good. “We could put some gunships alongside for escort.”

  He thought about it a moment. “We could. And I want full teams on each landing ship. You and your PSO with ten of my people in one bird, another dozen in the other. That way you’ve got some firepower once you’re on the ground.”

  I paused, soaking in that the tenor of the conversation had changed from if we’d go to how we’d go. “Sure,” I said. I went along with his thought even though I didn’t think twenty-two soldiers would matter much if there was a problem.

  “Dawn tomorrow?” he asked.

  “That works.” I pushed myself up off of the edge of the table.

  “Okay. I’ll have it set up.” He put his hand out, and I shook it.

  “Alenda wants to come,” I said.

  “Your call.” He kept his face neutral, giving no indication of his thoughts on the matter.

  “I’m not taking her.” That would piss her off, but I could live with that. I couldn’t live with dead. Like I said before, I knew it for total bullshit, but I had to do it. If not for her good, then for mine.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I woke up with my heart hammering in my chest, drenched in sweat. I could hear heavy gunfire still ringing in my ears. My foot throbbed from where I’d been hit. Something was off, though. I couldn’t see any of the rest of the team in the dark. I sat up and whipped my head around, but there was a wall behind me. How did that get there? They were all dead, and it was my fault. I couldn’t be sure because I couldn’t see them, but I knew. They were fucking dead.

  There shouldn’t have been a wall on Polla like that.

  Polla . . .

  No, not Polla. Cappa.

  “I’m on Cappa Base. I’m on Cappa Base.”

  I told myself that over and over, but it took a moment for my nervous system to register it and for my heart rate to slow to something approaching normal. I felt a bit of a hangover headache coming, so I got up and drank some water, and splashed some on my face to wash off the sweat. I checked the time: 0211. I’d slept maybe ninety minutes.

  I got back into bed and lay down, my hands shaking from the adrenaline dump. I concentrated on taking deep breaths, tried to clear my mind of everything else except the sound of my breathing. I did the exercises the doctor gave me, relaxing different parts of my body every time I exhaled, as if blowing the stress out. After a time—I’m not sure how long—I fell back asleep.

  When I woke to my alarm at 0545, I didn’t feel rested.

  I showered and got coffee and decided against eating anything. I didn’t like to drop into the atmosphere on a full stomach. I didn’t puke, like some people, but it screwed with my digestion enough to make me uncomfortable all day. Better to be hungry.

  Mac came by to pick me up at 0630 and we made our way to the hangar for mission brief. He walked beside me, letting the two soldiers provide security for the trip. We were both kitted out in our body armor and heavily armed, so we made for a tough target. Mac chugged on another one of his nasty concoctions as we walked.

  “You know those things are going to kill you,” I said.

  “So is dropping into a Spec Ops base in the middle of nowhere without coordination, sir.” He had a point. We walked the rest of the way in amicable silence.

  We had a basic mission plan. A simple transport down to a friendly landing pad. We still spent twenty-five minutes going over contingencies. What to do if we landed somewhere hostile, what to do if we lost a ship. All the things you don’t want to think about before you encase yourself in metal and drop out of space. I closed my eyes for a moment while the lieutenant briefed.

  I wondered if anyone told her how lieutenants who traveled with me had fared lately. One dead, one in the hospital. Not a great record. But then, I’d never been particularly good luck for those around me. We’d won some fights, sure. But I’d lost people. So many that I couldn’t name them without the list I kept laminated on a card in my pocket. I needed to add the five soldiers from my last trip to Cappa. They hadn’t been under my command, but I was still responsible, at least in my mind. Of course, my mind wasn’t a very good judge of anything at the moment, but they were on my bill all the same.

  I tried to focus on the words of the briefing, but they slid off of my brain. After a while, we loaded into the two transports. I didn’t worry about it much. I’d done this so many times that the briefing didn’t matter anyway. I slapped a magazine into my Bitch, checking the load first to make sure I had guided rounds, then I synched my helmet’s receiver to the ship’s internal frequency.

  “This is Butler, can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, sir. I’m your pilot, Captain Jurzic.” A deep male voice that almost vibrated in the speaker of my helmet. “We’ll be ready to go momentarily. Looking at just under a thirty-minute trip. Destination is almost directly below us. Skies look good around the landing area, so we should have a clean ride.”

  “Great,” I said. “Keep me informed.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll let you know when we’re ready to launch. Waiting on the gunship escort to finish prep.”

  I leaned my head back into the headrest and closed my eyes. The next time the pilot spoke it jarred me, as if I’d drifted off for a moment without realizing it.

  “We’re ready to go, sir. Are you clear back there?”

  I gave the lieutenant sitting across from me a look to ask if she was ready.

  She looked down the ship, checking the soldiers seated on either side, then flashed me the thumbs-up.

  “We’re ready,” I said. I closed my eyes again and let the G-force from the launch wash over me. The belts bit into my shoulders and pushed me against Mac. Since I was in the front seat, there was nobody to my right to lean into me. Yet another privilege of rank.

  After a moment the ride smoothed out and settled down into that space-travel feeling where you’re not gaining or losing speed, so it feels like standing still. Only a slight vibration of the ship indicated movement at all as we switched from the initial booster engine to the smoother fusion one. I dozed in and out until we hit the atmosphere and things got bumpy.

  “We’re clear of the worst of it, sir,” said the pilot. “Approximately ten to destination.”

  “Roger.”

  “Sir . . .” The pilot came back on the internal channel a minute later and his voice had that universal quality that something was fucked up. “Sir . . . we have a problem.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “We’re being directed to an alternate landing zone by the Cappan air control. About two and a half klicks northeast.”

  “Screw that,” I said. “Ignore them. Land at our initial destination.”

  “That’s just it, sir. We can’t. They’ve shut down the instruments on the pad there. We’d be going in blind.”

  “So go in blind. You’ve done an assault landing before.” It seemed a simple solution, and it perturbed me that they even brought it up.

  The channel remained quiet for a moment.

  “Tell me you’ve done an assault landing before,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” came the response. “On the simulator.”

  I muted my microphone and bit back a scream of frustration. Another thing I failed to check. If I kept screwing up, someone else was going to get killed over one of my mistakes. Maybe me. I should have aborted the mission right then, no doubt. Easy call.

  But I didn’t.

  I could make up a bunch of reasons why, but being honest, I don’t know. I think I just wanted the thing to be over, one way or another. A stupid reason to make a decision.

  I flipped the c
hannel back open. “Can you pull up a map of the new landing area?”

  “Yes, sir. It looks like a warehouse complex. Multiple large pads. Probably where they bring in supplies.” The co-pilot, this time. Female voice.

  “Hold on, I’m coming up to see it.” I unbuckled myself and stood, then lurched forward into the dark-skinned lieutenant sitting across from me. Baxter. She caught me so I didn’t face-plant. She didn’t say anything, and my respect for her went up a notch. I half walked, half crawled to the door to the cockpit.

  “Show me,” I said.

  “Sir, you shouldn’t be unbuckled. It’s dangerous,” said the co-pilot.

  “As opposed to landing in an unsecure area on a hostile planet? Because that’s completely safe. Show me the map.”

  “On the screen, sir,” she said.

  The screen between them showed the original landing pad, highlighted in red, while the new pad flashed blue. “Can you zoom in?” I asked.

  The co-pilot pushed a couple buttons and the resolution increased around the new site. The pads looked like commercial landings, fit for ships well bigger than our landing craft. A series of rectangular buildings lined either side of the pads in orderly rows. Supply depot, just like the co-pilot said.

  “Can you pull up a live feed?”

  “No, sir, just the map,” she said. “There’s no coverage there right now.”

  Of course. “Okay. Treat it like it’s hostile. Have the gunships fly a recon pass before we get there, then come in as hot as you can without putting us at risk.”

  “Yes, sir,” they answered simultaneously.

  “Pass the map of the new area back to the lieutenant,” I said, then shuffle-walked back to the passenger compartment and knelt down in front of the platoon leader.

  I opened a private channel to Baxter and pointed to her handheld. “New landing zone!” I didn’t want to broadcast where everyone could hear until I let her know. Let her tell her own people. They’d respond better that way.

  Baxter looked at the device strapped to her wrist and pulled up the map, then nodded.