Lost in his thoughts, Ethan jumped slightly when the room behind him chimed. “New message,” a soothing female voice called.
Ethan sighed and headed in, the glass balcony door shutting behind him and cutting off the noises of the ship factory. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
“Hello?” a new voice said. It was friendly, even grandfatherly, and mildly excited. “Ah, message. I see. That’s fine. This is Robert Hannan, chief psychologist for the Veterans’ Rehabilitation Fund. I’m calling because I see here you’ve opted out of - you know what? Screw the routine. Suffice to say there’s a matter concerning you, Mister Walker, and I would like to talk to you about it sooner rather than later.
“Come by later, if you could, only schedule an appointment first. I wish I could say more, but it’s not something that can be said over public channels, if you know what I mean. And you’re not in trouble, if you’re wondering. Looking forward to seeing you!”
The recording cut off with a snap.
Ethan never answered his comm anymore, unless it was someone he knew. More often than not, though, it was some media outlet that wanted to interview him, or a business that wanted his endorsement for their products. To them, he was a goldmine – the hero of Dawn Six. The human who suffered at the hands of the Naldím, was mutilated by them, and in the end, defeated them.
Ethan had no interest in being the symbol of anything. He still longed for the roar of engines and the rumbling and rattling of a cockpit around him, but he would settle for a quiet retirement. Unfortunately, so long as he was profitable, that didn’t seem to be in the cards.
But Hannan’s message piqued his curiosity. Ethan sat down slowly, wracking his brain for what could possibly involve him. The only thing that came to mind was his treasonously extensive knowledge of Rebecca and her mission on Dawn, but only a few people knew about it, and he liked to think she would not have gone behind his back. There was only one way to find out.
“Make an appointment with Doctor Hannan,” Ethan said into the empty room.
The computer dinged in response. “An appointment has been made with Doctor Hannan for tomorrow at fourteen hundred hours Redding time.”
“Great.” Ethan wandered back onto the veranda, a cacophony of mechanical noises wafting over him from the factory. For a moment, he wished he was on the Gorgon, lifting into the stars and hurtling through the abyss at breakneck speeds. But it only took a glimpse backward to remember the horrors he had experienced on Voyager Dawn, and suddenly he was not so keen anymore.
*
The Veterans’ Rehabilitation Fund held a weekly get-together for the soldiers of Voyager Dawn, a meeting intended to be a support group that usually ended up in a drinking game at the bar across the street. Whatever VRF representative was present each week didn’t seem to mind terribly; the survivors had seen enough in their time to warrant some alcohol, though the agency was careful to prevent it becoming a chronic problem. The last thing the government needed now was a PR debacle.
Ethan had attended the first few events but, finding no pilots or other friends there, he opted to visit Ford on those days. Everyone else he cared about had been scattered to the wind by the war. Mason had been assigned to a megacarrier somewhere. Rico, though Ethan had not seen him since the Naldím’s first appearance on Dawn Six, returned briefly to inform Omicron that he was joining FAST, the Navy’s premier shock trooper battalion. Moira was still in intensive care, her doctors working miracles to combat the radiation damage inflicted on her by the Naldím’s weapons, and the rest of Dawn’s pilots had either retired to their homeworlds or rejoined the Navy.
Only seven weeks had passed since the beginning of the war, and eight had passed since Ford was admitted to the Elysium Military Hospital with a fractured spine and burns to most of his body. Modern medicine had worked its magic, however, and this week when Ethan visited, Ford met him at the door to the facility.
The old cowboy sported a slight hunch, and a good portion of his face was plastered with repair stimulants, but he moved with a spring in his step nonetheless.
“Shit, Walker. You visit me again and I’ll start thinking you’ve gone sentimental,” he said by way of greeting.
“I’m just making sure you’re not having fun without me,” Ethan answered.
Ford laughed. “Not a chance. You know what there is to do in a hospital? Absolute diddly-shit.”
“How about something different then?” Ethan offered, “I heard there’s some new tech up at Olympus Mons.”
Ford looked around, as if expecting an orderly to shoo Ethan away. “They’re sending me home tomorrow anyway,” he said. “Can’t make much of a difference if I just leave now.”
An hour later, Ford having had a short but fierce debate with his doctor on the triviality of spinal damage, the pair found themselves at the visitor’s center overlooking the Olympus Mons Airfield.
A squadron of B-525 Typhoons barreled overhead, completing another lap around the mountain, while Ethan and Ford watched pilots cross-training on Raptirs below.
“I tell you,” Ford said, sucking in a breath of putrid cigar smoke, “soon as I’m cleared, I’m heading back out. This civilian thing ain’t for me. Just one more week on house arrest, then I’m free to do whatever the hell I want.”
“They only have you on one week of bedrest?” Ethan said, surprised. He had seen spinal injuries before; they took months to recover from.
“Well, they said two, but I’m rounding down. Besides, I feel fine. A little graphene bracing on your backbone does that to you.”
“Don’t you have Searl’s?”
“Nope,” Ford said proudly. “Never lived on Mars before. Why, do you?”
“No,” Ethan said quickly. Most Martians he knew had Searl’s Disease. Somehow, though, he had escaped it. All his bones were still his, and not titanium replacements. There were other things that were not his, however. The Naldím brace on his arm, regardless of the time that had passed since it was grafted to his skin, still felt intrusive and vile, even more so since the anti-Naldím propaganda had sprung up across Mars. It bought him glances everywhere he went, sometimes curious, sometimes accusatory, and he hated them either way. Doctors had looked at it multiple times, each coming to the same conclusion: if he wanted it off, his arm would have to go with it.
Idly twisting the afflicted wrist, Ethan wrenched himself away from that train of thought. “So, you’re going back.”
“Yep,” Ford said. He took a long drag and cleared his throat. “I ain’t done killing aliens quite yet. What do you say? Want to come with?”
“No.” Ethan turned to face Ford, his face reddening slightly. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t think I can handle it again. It’s…”
“Haunting?” Ford suggested. Ethan nodded. “I get it. And hey, that’s your prerogative. For what it’s worth, though, you were a damned good pilot.”
“Thanks,” Ethan said quietly. For a while longer they watched the Raptirs from the terrace, then headed home, away from the war.
The Agent
The tentative first stage of Operation Bobcat has been a success, all things considered. The tunnels are breached and the convoy is moving forward on schedule. Light enemy resistance. I hesitate to bring to light Blizzard’s performance, but it may be necessary. The agent is doing well, especially considering the extenuating circumstances of her return to active duty, but is certainly not sizing up to Wraith standards at the moment. I recommend a psyche evaluation, and I believe her handler, Mr. Sloane, would agree.
Excerpt, Captain Riley Clay, Field Report
Trundling was the word that came to mind when Rebecca observed the progress of the motorcade. It was aggravatingly slow, vehicles stopping every few hundred meters to be dug out of the ice or repair a frozen component.
To make matters worse, following the Raptirs’ unparalleled success against the Spiders, Rebecca was sent back to Clay’s carrier until a more urgent mission required her attention, and despite numerous s
kirmishes at the head of the line, there was nothing for her to do. Finally, four days into the tunnels, Sloane had a job for her.
“Not a job, per se,” he warned in preamble, “but an assignment.”
“Anything,” Rebecca said.
“A new shipment of Raptirs is coming in from the surface today. Thirty marines and one Wraith.”
“We have a Wraith,” Rebecca said indignantly. She had never heard of more than one operating in an area, and given the amount of excitement surrounding the caravan, it was certainly not necessary.
“Yes,” Sloane agreed, “but this one is fresh off the Scabbard.”
“Are you saying he’s better than me?”
“No, I’m saying she’s here for evaluation. From you, specifically.”
Rebecca cocked an eyebrow. “So, she hasn’t graduated yet.”
“If you give her high marks she will,” Sloane said. He handed her a tablet, the new Wraith’s information front and center on its screen. A moment passed while Rebecca looked over the file, then Sloane spoke again. “Look, I know you’ve been… distracted, at best. With her covering your six, maybe it will give you time to sort things out.” He looked around at the quietness of the cabin. “It’s not like we’re doing much anyway.”
“True.” Rebecca returned the tablet. “Not like I have a choice, right?”
Sloane smiled, nearly grimacing. “Not really,” he said. “Get some rest. She’ll be here in a few hours, and then I’m sure Clay will have something for you.” Not expecting a goodbye from Rebecca, Sloane took his leave, and Rebecca took his advice.
The buzzing of her internal chronometer woke her up exactly two hours later, jarring her upright with its shrill tone. Of all the cybernetic enhancements shoved into her body, Rebecca hated the chronometer most of all. More than the others, it felt like another person inside her mind, reminding her whenever she tried to sleep that there was no rest for a Wraith. It felt like her drill sergeant.
Gearing up in full armor, Rebecca went to the motor pool at the rear of the carrier, ready to receive her trainee. The room had been emptied in preparation for the new influx of vehicles, and as the pack of electronic dinosaurs mounted a crest behind the convoy, the bay doors opened and the ramp extended, its end hovering half a meter above the ground so as to not impair the behemoth’s movement. The Raptirs approached at speed, clearing the gap with a quick pop of their hydraulics. They sounded eerily like Naldím.
Thirty marines dismounted, tactfully ignoring the Wraith hovering near the entrance, and headed inside. The thirty-first Raptir was still burdened, however, by a second Wraith, identical to the first in every way. Rebecca approached her when she finally clambered off the beast, having finished whatever invisible task she had been doing, and held out a hand. The Wraith took it.
“Agent Winters?” the Wraith said, “Eve Summers. Callsign Xeno.”
“Blizzard,” Rebecca responded. She removed her helmet, mirrored a second later by Eve. The latter was clearly Titian, bronze-skinned and round-faced, with a look of fierce determination in her eyes.
Before either could say anymore, the PA squawked and voice from the bridge filled the cavernous hangar. “Agent Winters, Agent Summers to the cab, please. Winters and Summers to the cab.”
Rebecca looked to Eve. “Time to go to work.”
*
Two shots rang out in unison, and two Naldím dropped dead across the chasm in response. Rebecca let out her breath and resettled.
“Check?” she said.
“Check,” Eve replied.
It was a routine job: provide cover fire for the engineering teams while they constructed in an impromptu bridge on which the convoy would traverse the canyon. But Rebecca was surprised at the younger Wraith’s seeming indifference to her first assignment; her own had been a nerve-wracking trek through hell, and not because of its difficulty. When a Wraith failed, they were subjected to far worse than a slap on the wrist.
Eve fired, yanking Rebecca out of her brief reverie, and across the way, another Naldím fell. For a while, the Naldím had returned fire enthusiastically, attacking the Wraiths and the engineers in turn, but as their own casualties mounted, they decided it was best to stay behind cover. Whenever one of them got curious, Rebecca and Eve corrected their mistake.
“So, what do you think?” Rebecca asked.
Eve chanced a glance at her before quickly returning focus to the far embankment. “Of what?”
“The world outside the Scabbard.”
“It’s a lot louder,” Eve said dryly.
Rebecca smirked under her helmet. She had had the same thought on her first combat mission. Marines did not respect the same code of discipline that Wraiths did. “It’s more interesting, though,” she said, “and the soldiers are fine once you get to know them.”
“If you say so.” Eve took another shot, and Rebecca mimicked her. A blood-curdling noise rose from the other side of the canyon, halfway between a scream and a roar. Through a snow dune, a bolt of green energy blasted its way toward the Wraiths, overshooting them by less than a meter. Another bolt followed close behind.
“They’re getting back on their feet,” Rebecca said. “Come on.” Careful to keep low, she turned and began crawling down the length of the chasm. Twenty meters later she came to a halt and readied herself to resume fire as Eve sidled up next to her.
“What’s it like?” the latter said suddenly, nonchalantly checking her magazine, “Losing people. Like on Voyager Dawn.”
The question jarred Rebecca in a way she found extremely unsettling. It occurred to her that although Eve had undergone extensive training in professional detachment and had been implanted with a limbic regulator in the unlikely situation that the training failed her, she could never be truly prepared to watch someone she had worked with die horribly in front of her. Rebecca certainly hadn’t been.
“You live with it,” she answered truthfully. “There’s nothing you can do, so you live with it.” She paused, then added, “Why?”
Eve looked past her to the engineers further down the ridge. One of them was being carried away from the construction site by his comrades, clutching his arm and wailing. “Just curious,” she said quietly. She fired again.
Rebecca sighed to herself and responded to the younger Wraith’s shot, driving a bullet of her own through the head of the next Naldím that dared peek over the embankment. In the instant that Eve had asked the question, she realized that it was not so much the losses suffered aboard Voyager Dawn that caused her to lay awake at night, but rather those she left behind. Ethan was a particularly virulent memory. There was something about Ethan, something that Rebecca couldn’t shake from her head, and it tortured her not knowing what it was. Worse than that, though, was the fact that there was no one to talk to. No one would understand, much less sympathize, given that she was a Wraith, and she was supposed to be above such things. Unless…
“Miss anyone from the Scabbard?” Rebecca asked suddenly.
Eve squeezed off another round before responding. “No.” She hesitated, then corrected herself. “Maybe Doctor Shen. He was…” Eve searched around for the word. “Nice.”
“He doesn’t insult you like the others,” Rebecca agreed.
“Everyone here is like him,” Eve observed. “Nice, I mean.”
“Everyone outside the Scabbard is. People can’t afford to be cruel to each other when they’re fighting for their lives.” A screaming bolt whizzed over Rebecca, and she sent a scathing reply.
Eve failed to pursue the topic, giving Rebecca the distinct impression that she did not much care for discussing her feelings. She abandoned the line of questioning and returned to the matter at hand. Again, Rebecca squeezed the trigger, but this time the gun clicked.
“I’m out,” she said, carefully sitting up so that she was still protected by the embankment.
“Running low, too,” Eve answered. “Call it in?”
“Yeah.”
A few minutes later, one
of the scouts from the Forty-fourth arrived, his Raptir’s saddlebags replaced with two oversized boxes of sniper rounds. He dismounted a little way from the cliff edge and brought the ammunition to them at a crawl.
Distributing the bullets to them, the marine took a moment to watch the engineers.
“Clay’s sending reinforcements,” he said, fumbling with the lock on the second box. “He says you could be out here a while, and he doesn’t want to leave you alone.”
“We’re fine,” Rebecca objected.
The marine shrugged. “Captain’s orders.”
“Do the Neers have an ETA?” Eve piped up.
“Eight hours if they don’t take any more hits. With you guys out here, I’m guessing they won’t.”
“We’ll see.” Not waiting to excuse the soldier, Rebecca rolled back over on her stomach and retook her firing position. “Thanks,” she said over her shoulder, as an afterthought.
“Hey, yeah, no problem. Cover my retreat?” Rebecca nodded and began to fire, Eve joining in a moment later. Between the intermittent thunderclaps of their rifles, they could hear the Raptir plodding away.
Soon the pair found their rhythm again, and they settled in for the hours of shooting ahead. It was going to be a long night.
The Doctor
To Frontier Sector I-21 Administration:
Please look into the matter of the attached Inquiry article. Within are details of Sector Security operations that do not appear to conform to regulations. The SS is well-known for diverting from the rules in times of crisis (most recently during the Frontier Disputes), and it would be most unfortunate if this behavior resurfaced. We do not need another problem on our hands right now.
Thank you for your consideration,
Imperator Cross - Northern Frontier
Link: “They Told Us We Were Safe: Stories of the Frontier Sector Refugees”
The government hub where Doctor Hannan worked was situated at the exact center of Redding, making it the nerve center for all government operations in the city, and - as Redding was the capital of Mars - the planet. Even still, there seemed to be an inordinate number of civilians present when Ethan stepped through the high double doors into the grandiose reception area.
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