by Mike Moscoe
* * * *
The engagement of Rita Nuu to Major Raymond Longknife was a most indecorous week long, though her mother seemed no less enthusiastic for the date. The honeymoon was a very short week. Then Senior Pilot/bride Rita Longknife reported to her ship for a lift the admiral assured everyone would end resistance on ELM-0129-4A. A week later they informed Ray he was a widower.
Nine
Lieutenant Mary Rodrigo tried to keep an open mind about her new job. She was getting away from the captain. Of course, she'd be meeting two more. Still, it was a kick taking off with the captain's command car; Dumont said it was better than stealing wheels. The drive was like old times after a shift. No beer, but it felt the freedom you got after long hours in the hole.
Maybe they treated her a bit different, but not that much.
At B company, there was a difference. The others headed off to spend time with the sergeants. A runner, stiff ¦ a board, led Mary to the company HQ. She hoped this new captain wouldn't be as big an ass as hers. She passed through the airlock, prepared to report like she'd learned in boot camp. What she saw stopped her dead in her tracks Not one captain but two were waiting for her. Both sat, feet up on the desk, unlit cigars in their mouths. When she started to salute, the one that seemed to be most behind the desk waved her off. “Damn fine bit of fighting. Lieutenant. Damn fine.”
“'And even more impressive field preparations,” a third man said, standing to shake her hand. “Lieutenant Hampton. They call me Hambone. I'm in charge of the engineering platoon. How the hell did you do all that in the time you had?”
“With the mining gear we ... uh ...”
“Stole,” the other captain put in. “Call me Hassle. That's the best most folks can do with my name. I've got C company, but I figured I might as well trudge over here so you can brief us together. Our passes are only two hundred klicks apart, so we're right neighborly. Right, Trouble?”
“Tordon, Company B.” He reached across the desk to shake Mary's hand. “Tordon to my friends, Trouble to anyone else.” Then he shrugged into a sly grin. “Okay, Trouble to everyone.”
Hambone got her a chair. She was later to discover, not from him, that he was a first lieutenant, and therefore outranked her. What she did discover was a man very intent on learning everything he could about battlefield preparation. For the next two hours, they listened while she described the deployment and battle. When Mary finished, the engineering lieutenant walked around the desk, examining the map Mary had called up. “Outstanding killing field.”
“And holding those SS-12's to the last minute,” Trouble said slowly. “Brilliant timing by your lieutenant. And your targeting was just as smart.”
“The way you played the laser designators.” Hassle looked up from the board and fixed her with a hard eye. “Yours were programmable. I could use a few like that.”
Trouble leaned back in his chair. “We got a lot of retraining to do. And a lot of work. We better get cracking.”
“I figured on a day to fix you up like us.” Mary immediately felt dumb as all three officers shook their heads.
“They've tried straight on with you,” Trouble said.
“They'll be indirect on us,” Hassle concluded.
“We've got to prepare a lot of rim,” the engineer muttered.
Mary kept her mouth shut as they worked their way around a map of their own positions. They didn't expect anyone would be dumb enough to land in the crater. What they did expect was small teams of spotters working their way over the rim and around their positions. “We got to spread out, Mary,” Hassle told her. “Your diggers and sensors can cover a lot of territory. With rockets and gunners to back them up, we should be able to cover a big chunk of the eight hundred klicks of rim we got. How long will it take to bust your gear loose from Ted?”
“There's a truck parked next to our rig. It's got everything you'll need.” Mary grinned. These guys were nice to be around.
“Woman,” Trouble said, “if you could cook, I'd marry >you. On second thought, I've eaten so much marine chow my taste'11 never recover.” He dropped to a knee. “Will you marry me?” .
“Better decide quick,” Hassle cut in. “He's got a lousy memory, but I must say, his tastes are improving.”
“Well. . .” Mary hesitated as if in the throes of indecision. “It is the best offer I've had this week.”
Trouble was off his knee, reaching for a helmet behind his desk. “Let's go see what Santa brought us good little girls and boys in her truck.”
“Too late, Mary, you've lost him,” Hassle sighed.
* * * *
The Sheffield’s tanks were topped off. What battle damage they could fix was repaired. They floated a hundred klicks from the unruly jump point. Mattim took his chair and punched his mike. “All hands, this is the captain. We've got the ship in as good a shape as we're going to, short of a yard period. We've got a good handle on this system. Let's see how these jump points work.”
Sandy had done her best with what they knew of this point's wanderings. This system might account for as much as ten percent of the travel, or as little as two percent—depending on how you factored in the inverse square effect. In other words, they were guessing.
“As you've probably already figured out, all we can do is try a few jumps and see what happens. Since we're almost dead in space, we should be able to do them fairly quickly. Strap yourselves in tight. Here goes the first test.”
He killed the mike. “Sandy, take us through.”
“Thor, activate course Sandy One. Let's see what a spin with a bit of lateral movement gets us. Keep her under one klick per second.” Mattim forced himself to breathe normally for the minute and a half it took to reach the jump. When had ninety seconds been so long? Right, in battle.
He waited.
The Maggie entered the jump without a shudder. One moment the stars were there, twinkling in the unique way the gravity fluctuation in the point made them. Then they were different. Mattim waited for the specialists to tell him how different.
“It's not Pitt's Hope,” Thor quickly reported.
Sandy and the three middies around her said nothing.
“Scan the system,” Mattim ordered.
“Doing it, sir,” Thor answered. “Got a single yellow sun down there. My middies will need a while to check for planets.”
“Thanks.” Mattim let out a long sigh. He'd have to do better at waiting. He didn't like waiting. He'd better learn.
“I'll need a couple more minutes to refine this,” Sandy said a short time later, “but it looks like we're about fifty light-years from our last system.”
“Closer or farther from human space?” Mattim asked.
“Neither. We lateraled.”
“Sandy, how much of a workup do you want on this system?”
“A pretty full one, Matt, if you don't mind.”
“Thor.”
“Give us a few hours. My team's pretty excited. That sun's got about the same heat and light as old Sol. If we find a rock in the right place, we might go into the real estate business when we get back.”
Or know where to go when we give up, Mattim added to himself. “Guns, any ideas from your team?”
“One of them may have something. We aren't sure.”
“Could we make the return trip at just a few meters per second?”
“Sandy?”
“It's worth a try.”
* * * *
Time was a blur for Mary. Both companies had half a platoon of miners. Once Mary gave them a chance to shine, they were quick to open their own private stashes. The captains were honest enough to admit they'd goofed, hearing about what Mary'd done and not looking in their own ranks for the same skills. They quickly corrected that, establishing an interim two squads of engineers in each company. Battlefield prep went quickly.
B and C companies spread out until they touched in the middle, then they stretched the other way as far as they could. B company should have touched A company, but Captain Teddy r
efused any assistance from Mary and her team. Digging in the other two companies turned into an endless task. First they did it as far as they could, as quickly as they could. Then they did it again, better. Finally, they did it a third time, looking for what they'd missed, improving what they had. They were only half done with the third iteration when all hell broke loose.
* * * *
The Maggie D rifted toward the jump point at exactly ten meters per second. Mattim had this terrible urge to keep asking “Are we there yet?” He had a moment of dizziness as the stars changed; there was a ... bump?
“What was that?” Sandy asked even as she started her search to pinpoint their location; four suns were not waiting for them.
“Felt just like when we hit a waterlogged log in the boat back home on the lake,” Zappa mused without looking up from her work. “Did we hit something?”
“Damage control,” Mattim snapped.
“No alarms, sir. No reports. No visible damage to the hull.”
“Guns, did that happen in the jump or around it? Were you expecting something like that?”
“I don't know, and no. We're stumped down here, too, sir.”
Mattim put the thump aside for the moment. “Thor, am I right, a new system?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sandy?”
She rubbed her jaw like she'd been hit. “Speed was the only variable. But it's not supposed to have any effect!”
“It looks like it did this time. Flip this ship while we've still got the same motion on it, and put us back through the jump at the same slow speed. Now.” Mattim couldn't wait for this new disaster to shoot through the ship. The middies might be having a ball studying new worlds, but the rest of the crew, not to mention the captain, wanted to find their way home.
Thor did the flip. He headed them back at the same terribly slow pace. This time, Mattim still felt dizzy, but there was no thump. And the stars changed back to the last system they'd been in. “We can repeat a trip,” Mattim breathed in relief.
“But velocity shouldn't have any effect,” Sandy mumbled.
“It does now,” Mattim concluded. “It does now.”
“No bump the second jump,” Zappa noted. “Wonder what it was?” Mattim had other questions. That one he'd leave to the kids.
* * * *
Lek alerted Mary and the captains as soon as the first jump point coughed up activity. The Collies were expected; not thirty minutes later, Pitt's Hope spat out its contribution. Everyone dug in deep and sweated out the eight hours for the relativity bombs to hit. They did a lot of rocking and shaking, but there was no damage. Mary's team sidestepped to the right of B company. They would cover the midpoint between A and B. If the captain didn't want them, at least they wouldn't be too far away if he hollered.
Eight hours later, the scene above Mary was hellish in its beauty. The Navy and the colonials went at each other with no holds barred. Lek showed Mary the situation. There were thirty, forty transports. The Navy wanted at them; the colonials had to keep them away. In the black sky above Mary, ships burned yellow and red. Bright comets swept across the sky, ships holed and bleeding incandescent. Stars, as bright as Mary had ever seen, flared up and disappeared in a blink. She knew this was war and people were dying, but it was beautiful.
Lek kept a running count of the transports destroyed. The marines on net cheered at each he reported gone.
Rita held the Friendship in formation, jinking and dodging. The Earthies had not gone for a head-on pass, but had angled over, matched orbits with them. Two were now dogging the formation's right flank, nipping and cutting at any transport that came in range. Rita jinked wrong.
“We're hit. Losing pressure in tank five,” Cadow reported.
“Pump it dry,” she snapped, and jinked again. Her little transport didn't have the ice to take too many hits. Where were those damn Unity cruisers? Three dropped from the higher orbit, and the Humanity cruisers got busy and then got gone.
She came in fast and low for her landing zone and hit heavy. The troops didn't mind; they piled off in less than ten minutes. Their rigs and a month's supplies added another ten minutes to the Friendship’s stay. It was too long.
A rocket landed close; fragments rattled the ship. A second missile took out the Brotherhood . Loaded with heavy weapons and ammunition, the ship disintegrated. A thick slab of hull smashed down next to the Friendship—and bounced in the other direction.
“That was close,” Cadow breathed.
“Too damn close. Hesper, we unloaded?”
No answer. Rita scanned through her video stations. An outside shot showed a supply rig upside down, smashed by a jagged fragment. Hesper's orange suit was half under it. Rita tuned to the vitals from Hesper's suit. The suit was still sending; it just had no vitals to report.
“Prepare to lift ship,” Rita ordered.
* * * *
Mary hated each and every ship that landed. They seemed to be setting up a base in the general direction of C company. Mary was glad to have them over there—then ashamed. Hassle and his crew didn't deserve what was headed their way. “Mary, Trouble here. Can you spread out to cover my right? C's going to catch all hell, and I'm shuffling some teams to cover his right.”
“No problem.” Mary sent Cassie and Dumont to fill the hole. They'd be covering thirty klicks, but with the sensors and rockets, they should be able to keep any surprises under control.
“Mary,” Lek interrupted her, “one, maybe two ships have landed in front of A company.”
“If Captain Teddy Boy can't handle two ships with twice the people we had to hold six ships, he's not much of an officer.” Lek didn't ask Mary what she honestly thought.
* * * *
Rita lifted ship fast, but a Society cruiser was swinging by just as she did. With no other target, it devoted itself to her obliteration. Rita jinked and ducked the other way, heading in-system—away from the jump. It got her out of range of that damn cruiser soonest. She was almost clear when a laser sliced through the Friendship's cockpit like it was a ripe grapefruit.
* * * *
Mary watched as the battle raged, in space and on the ground. Transports didn't hang around this time, but took off fast. Still, Commander Umboto got a couple of long range missiles off at them. That woman is one bloodthirsty lady.
Mary didn't feel even a tiny bit guilty twelve hours later when things started to settle down and her sixty klicks had not been tapped. Only a fool looked for a fight.
“Lieutenant Rodrigo, battalion here. Report to A company and assume command.”
“Sir?”
“Do I need to repeat myself, Lieutenant?”
“No sir.” She recovered herself. No need to ask over the net for what he didn't want to give her.
“Lieutenant, we're assuming all radio and cables are compromised. There will be a coded situation report waiting for you at A company HQ. Try to straighten up that mess over there.”
“Yes, Major.”
Mary was quite amazed at what a command rig could do. She made it back to A company in two hours even with stops to return fire. The HQ was a shambles, but casualties were few. The miners and kids had learned how to look out for themselves.
She doubted there were more than two companies attacking, but they'd spread out and come in as infiltrators. The captain had done a poor job of spreading his outposts. When they broke through, he'd led a fire team out to fill the hole—and died.
It took Mary most of the next day to stabilize the situation. Keeping a firm hold on her center, she threw her teams first at her right flank, then at her left. Once the colonials saw they weren't going to take the pass from the rear, they fell back in good order. Mary tried to track them, but they spread out and went to ground. They'd be back.
“A company, battalion here. Could you spare C company a platoon? They're being pushed mighty hard.”
“They're on the way, Major.”
“Thanks for cleaning up the mess.”
Mary refuse
d to say “You're welcome.”
She hadn't cleaned up all the mess. She checked in where they had the captain's body. The wound was in the back; it had come at close range. So the miners and kids had done what they had to do to keep their casualties down.
She turned to the medic who'd brought her. “Clean the burn off his armor and patch it. We may need it. Once you peel the body out, make it presentable and send it back to brigade.”
“Will do, sir.”
Mary wondered what other messes she'd have to clean up.
* * * *
Out of consideration for his rank, they informed Longknife the day before the casualty list was released. They asked him to invite a vid crew out. He should make a statement, he and industrialist Ernest Nuu. They didn't tell him what he should say, but something along the lines of “It is a joy to die for the Fatherland” was strongly hinted at. Ray told them to go to hell.
Mrs. Nuu's wailing went long into the night. It did not keep Ray awake. He sat in the chair he had been sitting in when they brought him the news. He had sat there ever since. The doctors said he had to move, to circulate blood and avoid skin lesions.
The doctors could go to the same hell as the politicians.
About 0200 hours, Mr. Nuu came to his door to apologize for his wife. Ray invited him in, offered him a seat, and pointed to where an untouched bottle of cognac waited. The man poured two glasses, offered him one, and sat. For a long time, they stared silently out the window, undisturbed by the weeping. “I am sorry I could not protect your daughter, Mr. Nuu. I always thought it was a man's place to die, a woman's place to live.”
A wail from upstairs punctuated Ray's sentence. It died out and the night was quiet before Mr. Nuu shook his head. “Since she was twelve, Rita wanted to be a pilot. 'How can I carry a man's child if he has faced death and I am too delicate to stare it in the eye? Let me fight, then see the mother I'll be.' “ The man took a long drink. In the dim light, Ray saw his eyes blinking. Ray's did too; it was not easy to keep the tears back.
“She would have been a very good mother,” Ray finally said.
“Yes,” her father sighed. After a long moment, he muttered, “What a waste.” He seemed taken aback by his words. He glanced at Ray, expecting condemnation. Ray was long past any emotions.