Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  Elliot shook her head vigorously. “No. The building is soundproof.”

  I stopped. “You’re sure?”

  “It’s bad medical practice to let people hear screams outside.”

  “I suppose it would be. We’re still surrounded. We need a plan.”

  “You killed him,” she said.

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  I walked toward her. “He’s High Councilor Mallot’s son. When this story gets told, we don’t want contradicting viewpoints.”

  “That’s . . . that’s cold blooded.” I almost mentioned that she shot Mallot first.

  “He killed Kwan,” I said.

  Elliot glanced toward her dead subordinate. “He did. Yeah. Fuck him.”

  “Exactly. Now we just have to figure out how to get by the Cappans guarding this place before they decide something is strange and come in to check.”

  “They won’t come in,” she said. “They can’t. The door is coded.”

  “They could blow it down.”

  She shook her head. “We’ve made it well worth their while to protect this place.”

  “You’ve what?” I stared.

  “We’ve traded technology for cooperation. We needed live Cappan volunteers for our work.”

  “You’ve traded . . . how long has this been going on?”

  Elliot shrugged. “A while. Certainly since before my time here. There was a lot of research that went into this before we could put it into practice.”

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” My voice rose. “And for what?” I gestured at Mallot’s body. “A bunch of unstable soldiers.”

  Elliot looked down at the floor. “We’re going to have to adjust the procedure. Something isn’t quite right.”

  “Adjust the procedure? There’s no adjusting. Don’t you see the problem here? You’ve given the Cappans technology and they’re using it to kill people.”

  “I gave those soldiers their lives back! This is groundbreaking.”

  “You experimented on humans, Elliot.”

  “And it’s working. I can figure this out. It’s going to change medicine across the galaxy.” She took a couple steps, then whirled and paced back.

  I shook my head. “When word of this gets out . . . people are going to go berserk.”

  “They’ll understand. The greater good. I’m not the only one, you know.”

  She still didn’t get it. “Elliot. It’s over. I don’t care who else is involved. It’s you who has to put a stop to it.” I realized at that point she still had a weapon clutched in her hands. It didn’t change the end result, but she was armed and I didn’t know what she was thinking. “It’s over.”

  She stood there, looking at the floor for at least half a minute, rocking slightly from foot to foot. “It can’t be over. I can figure it out.”

  “Elliot . . .”

  She raised her weapon and I took a step back. I had a weapon too, but something froze me in place. I can’t say why. I couldn’t move. A hundred thoughts flashed through my mind. Did anyone else know what I knew?

  “It’s over,” she said, softly.

  It confused me, which also kept me paralyzed.

  Before I could move she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

  I’m not the only one. I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I didn’t like the implication. Did she mean more people on Cappa Base, or was she referring to something broader? It wouldn’t matter unless I could get off the planet.

  Stepping over Elliot’s body, I dug through her bag, looking for something I could use to call for help.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The seven minutes that I spent in decon dragged like an hour. No matter the situation, you didn’t rush decontamination, so I waited. Scans, treatments, checks . . . everything you needed to make sure you didn’t bring something alien back with you. The fact that I’d done it hundreds of times didn’t make this one any easier.

  The trip back spaceside had proved easy enough once I found the comm in Elliot’s bag. Forty minutes later two companies of infantry dropped in with enough firepower to melt buildings while I hunkered down safe inside the medical facility.

  Mac limped over to me as soon as I walked out of the decon facility.

  Stirling stood back a couple paces, tapping his foot and looking like he had a stick up his ass.

  I ignored him and shook Mac’s hand. “You had that foot looked at?”

  Mac hesitated, looking down at his damaged boot. “Not yet, sir.”

  “Get it done. I’ll catch up with you after.”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir. Glad you made it, sir.”

  Stirling didn’t even wait for Mac to get on the nearby cart. “What in the fu—what happened down there?”

  I knew he didn’t like to swear, but if there was ever a time for swearing, this had to be it.

  “How many people made it back?” I asked, purposely lowering my voice since he’d raised his.

  He paused. “Eight. Seven plus the pilot who ejected. Most of them are at the hospital.”

  I nodded.

  “We need to debrief you. About what happened in the medical facility,” he said.

  “Nothing to debrief. Mallot shot Kwan, Elliot shot Mallot, then Elliot shot herself.”

  “I’d like to get you on a polygraph.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Excuse me?” He stopped abruptly.

  “You heard me. I have things to do.” Serata gave me authority over the command, so I didn’t have to do anything Stirling said unless I chose. I glanced around us at several soldiers staring. As mad as I was, we had nothing to gain by starting rumors about colonels arguing. “You want to talk, let’s go somewhere private.”

  Stirling was about to say something more, but no matter what I thought of him, he hadn’t gotten to where he was by being stupid. Spinning, he walked off and I followed, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my shoulder.

  “So what do you know?” He turned on me as soon as we made it through his office door.

  “Close the door,” I said.

  He complied. “I need to know what you know.”

  “Shut the fuck up and listen to me,” I said.

  He stopped short.

  “You want to know what I know? What I know is that there was a fucking high-tech anti-ship battery down there that you didn’t know about, and it shot down several of our birds. What I know is that there’s a rogue Special Ops unit on the surface, most of whom are working with the enemy. What do I know? I don’t know fucking anything! And apparently, neither do you.”

  He clenched his fists. “I don’t know anything? I’m on the hook for this entire war. And you wheel in here like you’ve got all the answers!”

  “You think I asked for this? If you hadn’t screwed this investigation to hell, I wouldn’t even be here. And you know what? I’d be fine with that. Sixteen men and women are dead down on that planet. More if you count the pilots.”

  Stirling waited for a moment, as if seeing if I had anything else to say. “You done?”

  I gnawed on my cheek and thought about it. “I think so. Sorry. Long day.”

  He nodded. “You want a drink?” He walked over to his desk and pulled out a bottle of something.

  “Synthanol?” I frowned.

  “It’s all I’ve got.”

  Beggars and choosers. “Yeah, I’ll have a belt,” I said.

  Stirling took a glass out of his drawer and poured two fingers into it, then held it out to me.

  “Real glass for fake booze,” I said. “You’re not going to have one?”

  He half smiled. “I’ve got a base to run and a war to fight. You might not have heard, but things went poorly planetside.”

  “Yeah.” I tossed back half the liquor, cringing at the chemical aftertaste. I paused for a minute and threw down the rest of it, then sighed. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Have a seat,” he said.

  I pulled a chai
r away from the table and flopped into it.

  “How bad is the shoulder?”

  I pursed my lips and breathed through my nose. “I don’t know. Bad. Hurts inside. Something’s not right.”

  “You should get it looked at,” said Stirling.

  “At Elliot’s hospital? I don’t think so.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Some of them are part of this. I don’t know who, and I don’t know how big a role they had.”

  Stirling’s eyes left mine, losing their focus. “They’re going to fry me for this,” he said, almost caught between talking and a whisper.

  “For what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “The enemy had a damned anti-ship battery. I didn’t know about it.”

  “Nobody knew about it. It fooled everyone.” Except that Karikov said that Stirling knew. He hadn’t specifically mentioned the anti-ship battery, but he’d been clear about Stirling. I didn’t know what to think. Even if I did, I’m not sure I’d have trusted my own judgment after the last two days. I needed rest.

  “It wasn’t everyone’s job to know,” he said.

  “There are a lot of people whose job it was.” I don’t know why I tried to comfort him. I guess part of me felt bad for him. The part that didn’t want to punch him in the face.

  “And ninety-five percent of them work for me. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m so screwed.”

  I wanted to grab him and shake him, but it wouldn’t solve anything if I lost my shit again. “You’re worrying about the wrong thing. There will be plenty of time for pointing fingers and assigning blame, later. Right now, you have to figure out what you do next.”

  He looked down at the floor for a moment. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “You’ve got to get your folks off of the surface.” I don’t know why that came to me, but as soon as I said the words, I knew I had it right.

  He jerked his head up. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “The report I got said that we’ve gravely misread the partisans, and that almost all of the Cappans are against us.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Stirling.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Just like it’s impossible that they hid a huge pulse weapon and a bunch of anti-air missiles?”

  He stared at me, and for a minute I thought he might snap. “That would mean—”

  “It would mean that there are a few million more enemy than you thought you had yesterday,” I said.

  Stirling sat silently for what seemed like a minute, but was probably less. “No way.”

  “I got the report myself,” I said. “I saw military transport cases in a mine.”

  “Who gave you the report?”

  “Karikov,” I said.

  “Karikov.” He gave me a cold, flat smile. “And exactly how would you describe your interaction with Karikov? How was he?”

  What did Stirling know? “He was . . . agitated.”

  “Agitated, or straight-up insane?” he asked. He did know. That pissed me off.

  “You knew about him and you didn’t tell me before now?” I started to stand, but fought the urge, tried to calm myself. “What else did you know?”

  “I know he’s an amputee living down on the surface that hasn’t come up in a long, long time. And that any attempt to get in touch with him is blocked,” said Stirling.

  I paused. “But you asked if he was insane.”

  “Was he?” Stirling met my eyes and didn’t blink.

  “I’m getting sick of this game, Aaron.” This time I did stand. I thought about ordering him to come clean, but that would give away information I wanted to hide a bit longer. I needed rest before I made that decision. “You know more than you’re saying, and you’ve kept too many things from me.”

  “Was he crazy?” he asked, calmly.

  I sighed. “I’m not sure he was all there. But he was lucid for a time.”

  “And you’re basing your entire assessment of the enemy off of him. An assessment that is completely out of line with any other intelligence we’ve got. And you want me to run away,” he said.

  I paced, slamming my feet down into the cheap, industrial carpet. “I’m basing my assessment on more than that, including the bullets that kept getting shot at me. We got chased across a planet by hundreds of enemies that did things we didn’t know they could do. Ask your pilots what they think.”

  “You’re too close to the situation to see it clearly, Carl. I’m not running away because you have a hunch.”

  “Fuck, Aaron! It’s not because I have a hunch, and you know it. And I’m not telling you to run away. Fall back until you’ve got a better picture. Pick your locations. Conduct assaults. Figure out where the Cappans might be hiding more surprises.” I couldn’t tell if he was spinning me up on purpose or not, but I’d pretty well lost it, either way. He needed to see the situation for what it was.

  “We’re working on the hidden weapons right now,” he said. “I’ve got my intel focused on it. We’ll find them and we’ll destroy them.”

  “So why not get your people to safety while you do it?” I asked. “You have no idea when they might attack, and with how much.”

  Stirling started to pace, then turned back to me. “I’ll have another brigade here in a couple of months. My guys can hold out for now, and when we get the added forces, then we can go on the offensive.”

  I started to respond but lost my words. A chill shot through me. Another brigade. Serata mentioned adding a second brigade out here when I met him at his office months ago. Why was he rotating an additional brigade out here?

  “Carl?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, just thinking about something.” I wondered if Stirling saw this as more than a coincidence. I wondered if he knew. Why did Serata have another brigade coming unless he knew they’d be needed?

  “We’ll monitor activity.” His voice calmed measurably, like he was trying to pacify me. Asshole. “If we see anything out of the usual, anything we can’t handle, we’ll get our folks clear.”

  “Sure. I hope when you figure it out, it’s not too late.” It pissed me off that he couldn’t see things clearly. Or that he wouldn’t.

  “It won’t be. Even if they launched a full offensive, it would have to come from somewhere.”

  “They’re hiding equipment in the mines. When you scan, you’re going to pick up machinery, but you won’t know if it’s there to work the excavations or if it’s something else.”

  Stirling frowned, lines forming on his forehead. “We’ll get something in closer.”

  “You’ll need to.”

  “We can work our biological assets. Folks on the ground. We’ve got some Cappan informers.” He kept pacing, really thinking about it. He wasn’t a good enough actor to fool me.

  “If you can trust them,” I said. His failure to see the truth frustrated me more and more. It was as if he couldn’t grasp the real meaning of my words. And he continued to miss the point.

  “They’re rated sources. Vetted. We’ve measured what they give us. Compared it to what we actually found,” he said.

  “Yeah, I get it.” I just hoped that the Cappan sources hadn’t been feeding known information in order to create a false sense of dependence. Even I thought that was too far, though. I was being paranoid.

  Maybe.

  “I need to get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” said Stirling. “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”

  “I know you do.”

  Maybe.

  Alenda met me outside the door to Stirling’s outer office. “Heard things planetside went a little pear shaped.”

  I grunted. “A little.”

  “I should have been there, sir.”

  “And done what, Lex? What would it have changed?”

  “I’d have been there, sir. I wouldn’t have had to sit up here, wondering what the hell was going on when those ships went down.”

  “Then you’d either be dead, or wounded, or in
the best case have a lot of souls to carry around in your brain for the rest of your life.”

  “Do you think it was better up here, sir? Powerless?” She turned away for a moment, but the angry twist of her lips remained when she faced me again.

  “Yeah, you’re right, Lex. I should have taken you,” I lied. She didn’t understand, and it was better that way. But she was mollified, and it was better than continuing to try to convince her about the horrors she’d missed.

  “What do you need me to do, sir?”

  “I’m going to sleep for eight hours. Don’t let me go any longer than that. In eight hours and thirty minutes I want you to bring me the most up to date intelligence reports you can get about what’s going on down on the surface.”

  She looked at me, then walked along beside me without speaking for a bit. “What am I looking for, sir?”

  I looked at her.

  “It will help me prioritize the most important reports, sir. It’s a lot of data.”

  I breathed air out through my mouth. I had to decide once and for all if I trusted her to do what I needed instead of running to Stirling. I flipped a mental coin. She won. “Right. Any evidence of Cappan movement beyond a couple dozen. I don’t care if they’re friendly, enemy, armed, unarmed. Anything that moves.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want to see everything intel gets on the mines, and anything that indicates any sort of weapon larger than a rifle,” I added.

  “Yes, sir. I know they’ve been gathering a lot on that since the fighters got shot down.”

  “Good,” I said. “Anything else that looks like an attack, or a preparation for an attack.”

  “You really think there’s going to be something, sir?”

  “I’m not sure. I just think we don’t know anything, and I know that’s bad.”

  She pursed her lips, but if she wanted to say something, she decided against it. “Roger, sir.”

  We walked for a few minutes, then I stopped short of my door, where G One and G Two stood on guard. “What are you two doing here? I’ve been off base.”

  “We’re guarding your quarters, sir,” said G One, looking at me like I’d asked a ridiculous question.

  I scrunched my face and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Why?”