by Ben Weaver
Behind us, the ground splintered open, with some clefts growing as wide as several dozen meters to swallow the comm dishes amid blustering wind and sand.
Two figures bolted away from the fallen ATC, and my HUV immediately IDed them as corpsmen Heloise and Toma. A long-range radar report alerted me to a pair of incoming atmoattack jets in the north, while another pair of Guard Corps ATCs streaked in from the east—all ships powered by their pilots’ life forces and impervious to the pulse wave. ETA on the atmos: four minutes, with three on the ATCs. I assumed the corpsmen were in retreat because of those incoming aircraft, but when we reached our ATC and found Andropolus and Goosavatic slumped in their seats, point-blank particle fire having bored through their skins to penetrate the backs of their heads, I concluded that the corpsmen had shot them. Both Heloise and Toma were conditioned, and I doubted their ranks and identities.
Halitov, never one to keep questions to himself, hollered, “What the fuck is going on?”
“I think this installation was ours,” I yelled. “Doyle or someone else sent us in to kill our own people. Heloise and Toma probably have orders to make sure we don’t come back.”
“I think you’re right,” said Beauregard. “Check your HUVs. Major Alliance troop movements in Valles Marineris. It’s their offensive. Not ours. Fuck!”
The skin crawled on my neck. I whipped around. There, on the overhead just behind an unsuspecting Dina, hung one of the conditioned Marines, a woman who was on our side but did not realize who we were. Comfortably inverted like a bat, she punched one K-bar into Dina’s back, dragged the other across her throat.
Dina’s eyes ignited. Blood splayed across the front of her uniform as she fell to her knees, gave me a pleading look, then tipped onto her side. The Marine sprang off the overhead, rolled, and landed on her boots, then accosted me with both blades. I stood there, rooted in agony, my heart triphammering. Should I go to Dina or take on the Marine?
A screaming Beauregard threw me against the bulkhead as he drew a K-bar and took on the Marine himself.
In the interim, two more Marines bounded up the gangway and into the hold.
It’s hard to convey with any certainty exactly what I did. The memory is fused with so much emotion that the details defy even my conditioned memory. I know this much: I cried fiercely as I killed both of those Marines, tore off their tacs in my preferred method. Their skins died. They decompressed.
Meanwhile, Halitov had hauled Dina with surprising gentleness to the front of the hold. Her skin flickered.
I found Beauregard just outside the ATC, on his knees and driving his K-bar into the Marine who had attacked Dina. The woman lay supine and had, of course, died after the first two strikes to her heart. Later on, reports would indicate that Beauregard had actually stabbed her thirty-seven times before I tore the K-bar out of his hand and shoved him back into the ATC. Once in the hold, he took one look at Dina, saw that she still clung to life, and his mindless rage tightened into something much more deliberate and controlled. “Seal the hold,” he ordered me. “Try to pressurize.”
The ramp came up, but the crash had damaged the pressurization controls. I fiddled with them for a few seconds more, then made my report as Beauregard pulled Andropolus out of the pilot’s seat.
“Fuck it, then,” he said. “Her skin’s failing. One of you tie in. I’m using mine to power the ship.”
I checked my skin reading. Fifty-one percent. Still really low. Not enough to loan out to Dina without killing myself. I told Halitov, who eyed me blankly, then slowly shook his head. I called up his skin’s reading in my HUV: ninety-two percent. “You got enough,” I cried. “Hurry up.”
He visibly trembled. “I can’t. Nobody else can come in here. It’s me. All by myself. No one else is allowed.”
With hands guided by the bond, I penetrated his skin and choked him. “She’s gonna die.”
“I know. I know. But she can’t come in here.” He ripped my hands off his neck. “She can’t hear them laugh.”
Dina’s body suddenly stiffened, as though she had been shocked. Her skin dissolved. I looked away, sparing myself her decompression.
Maybe a minute later, I glowered at Halitov, whose expression lay on the brink of tears or rage, then I stumbled my way toward the cockpit. “Dina’s dead.”
“For now,” Beauregard qualified as he pulled back on the control yoke, taking us into a hard climb. “This ship’s tawt-capable.”
“So what? We have to get back. We have to tell them what happened. We’re the only ones who know.”
“Dina’s not going to die. I’m taking her to the Minsalo Caves. And that’s fuckin’ that.” A holograph to his right displayed the galactic tawt projection: a gleaming blue line extending from Mars and out some seventy-five light-years to Exeter. Thousands of calculations scrolled below the image.
Part of me thought, Screw the war. All that matters is her. We need to take her to the caves. There might be a chance.
But the voice that had convinced me to become a soldier, the one that always reminded me of my duty, argued against trying to save her. Jarrett had died. Joey Haltiwanger. Pope. So many more. And now Dina. We all had to accept that. Somehow. We had to think of the Corps first—no matter how god-awful that felt. “Paul, the alliances still control Exeter. We won’t even get near the moon, let alone the caves.”
He tightened his lips.
“We’ll be going AWOL,” I added.
His expression turned incredulous. “Like I give a fuck after what they did to us?”
My knees felt weak. “We should turn back. If there’s a traitor, we have to let them know. If we don’t, a lot of people will die because of us. We might even lose the war.”
“Thanks for your opinion, Mr. St. Andrew. You and Halitov take seats. Soon as we break atmosphere, we’re tawting.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no. You’re not going to do this. You’re commander of this op, but I don’t have to obey an order I find unconscionable.”
He fixed his gaze on his instruments, the canopy banded by the mauve Martian sky. “Unconscionable? You fuckin’ idiot. You don’t think she’s worth it? You of all people? You don’t think I know how you feel about her? Go sit down!”
My K-bar flashed from its sheath and hung balanced over his neck. “Land.”
“Scott, I’m not gonna let her die. So you’d better cut me right now!”
“She’s already dead. What if the caves can’t bring her back?”
“Then at least we die trying.”
“So you make that decision for me and Halitov?”
“All right. I understand.” He thumbed a pair of buttons to activate maneuvering thrusters, then banked hard and descended so quickly that I nearly fell against the canopy.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming up on the command center,” he said. “Blow the belly hatch. You guys can jump.”
“No.”
“Then you’d better use that fuckin’ blade, because I love that woman back there and nothing else matters. I’m taking her to Exeter.”
“What if she doesn’t love you?”
“I know she doesn’t.” He shot a glance to a navigation display. “If you’re getting off, do it now.”
My hand tensed. Biting back a curse, I pulled the K-bar away from his neck, then rushed out of the cockpit and to a control panel on the bulkhead to my left.
The belly hatch, a two-meter-by-two-meter pocket plate positioned in the center of the hold, slid open.
Halitov, who knelt over Dina’s body, glanced at the hatch, then cocked a brow.
“He’s taking her to the caves,” I explained. “We get off here.”
“Let’s go with him.”
“Stay if you want.” I couldn’t have cared less if he came or not. In truth, I didn’t blame him for Dina’s death, only for failing to help her. But my scowl and tone said otherwise. I neared the open hatch, stole a look at the surface sweepi
ng by about twenty meters below, then leaped out.
A few seconds later, Halitov followed. I smiled blackly as we came to gentle landings on the command center’s tarmac. During the entire mission, our conditioning had not once failed us, yet the events could not have unfolded more miserably.
Beauregard coaxed the ATC into a seventy-degree climb until the ship became a dark dot against the sky, a speck, the barest pinprick, gone.
Three broad shadows passed over us, accompanied by a distinctive booming that my cerebroed memories said was produced by CFRT military cargo ships. One of them lumbered into view, its long, pentagonal fuselage heavily shielded, its wedge-shaped bow dipping slightly as it turned on final approach and sprouted multijointed landing skids.
Just ahead, the entire subterranean command center had folded back in on itself, creating a massive sinkhole and ringing the bunker entrance with piles of stone and regolith. Four Guard Corps engineers manipulated a hydraulic crane that resembled a mechanized fire ant, with the crane apparatus angling up from its back. Behind the crane awaited ten more engineers near another cargo ship that had already landed and had opened its massive bay doors to accept the center.
Two sergeants supervising the loading jogged over, both drawing sidearms. “Who are you people?” the taller man asked.
I raised my palms. “I’m First Lieutenant Scott St. Andrew, and this is First Lieutenant Rooslin Halitov. We need to see the regimental commander. It’s an emergency.”
The sergeant grinned. “Emergency? More like a war.”
“Where’s the RC?” I demanded.
“Probably with everyone else—up in Valles Marineris. If you’re guardsmen, what are you doing here?”
“We don’t owe you a fuckin’ explanation,” snapped Halitov. “We gotta get to the RC—now!”
“Sergeant, can you get us up there?” I asked, a tad more civilly than my esteemed colleague.
“Tell you what,” the sergeant began, scrutinizing our weary expressions and bloodstained uniforms. “I’ll get you on a ship, but until we confirm your IDs, you’re both under arrest.”
17
We never made it to Vallis Marineris. The pilots of the light cargo ship on which Halitov and I had hitched a ride were ordered away from the rolling plains of the battlefield. We wound up landing at another temporary command center a thousand kilometers east, near Samara Vallis.
There, our tacs were decrypted to confirm our ID, then, under the dubious gazes of two company captains from the Thirty-second Regiment, we sat in a debriefing room and told our story. I informed one captain that I would submit to a cerebral scan so that he could literally see what I had seen. He took me up on the offer. Within the hour, he was a believer. Within another hour, the evac order came in. The Corps was pulling all troops off the planet in a “temporary withdrawal,” but I knew better. Mars was one of the original Sol colonies, and the alliances had so thoroughly imbued the planet’s citizens with a patriotic spirit that I doubted our presence had ever been welcomed. In fact, many of the locals acted as informants, contributing to our loss of over seventy-one thousand troops there. I held no animosity toward Mars’s people; those who sided with the colos would sacrifice their careers, their pensions, perhaps even their lives. The Seventeen had come to support the Inte-Micro Corporation, whose execs had refused to allow Alliance inspectors inside the Olympus Mons Mine. Alliance troops had invaded the mines. I guess what bothered me most was that we had come to Mars to liberate a corporation, not a neighborhood.
Instead of returning to our old regiment, Halitov and I were ordered back to Rexi-Calhoon, where we met with General Strident, the ivory-haired Odysseus who had given me my first star. I had never seen an office more harried, with aides bustling about, calls coming in on multiple monitors, and dozens of other high-ranking brass pouring over holograms. Strident guided us to two chairs facing his desk. “I’ve read your reports and reviewed your scans,” he said wearily, then dropped into his own chair. “Some news. An ATC penetrated the alliances’ no-fly zone over Exeter. The ship landed. No sign of Beauregard or Forrest.”
In deference to the general, I staved off my reaction. He would not appreciate my grinning over a first lieutenant who had gone AWOL. Still, the news did not mean that Beauregard had been successful in getting Dina to the caves. And while those caves had healed wounds, we had never seen them restore life.
“We tawted word to Colonel Beauregard,” the general went on. “It’ll take another sixteen hours before he knows.” Strident leaned forward, widening his eyes. “Gentlemen, what you did…it was in the best interests of the Corps. Maybe you’ll hate yourselves for it later, but consider this: If Lieutenant Beauregard survives, he’ll be court-martialed—and conditioning or not, he’ll be sentenced to manual labor. A waste of a talented young man.”
As Strident spoke, I felt more and more like I had betrayed Dina. Beauregard was the one who had made the right decision. The talented young man wasting his life was me.
A call came in over the general’s tablet. He spoke quietly, delayed a meeting by ten minutes, then faced us, his expression grim.
“Sir? Can’t Beauregard’s father do something to help?” asked Halitov.
“No.”
“He was trying to save a fellow guardsman’s life,” I said, just shy of a whisper.
“Lieutenant, save your testimony for the court-martial. In the meantime, thanks to you we’ve cleaned up the Thirty-first Regiment. Our investigation indicates that Captain Doyle had nothing to do with that attack on our own intelligence headquarters. He believed the center was operated by the alliances.”
“Was it the battalion commanders?” I asked, figuring I would work my way up from Doyle.
He nodded. “Lieutenant Colonels Pell and McTear, both South Point graduates. Pell had ten years with us, McTear sixteen. You were right about Heloise and Toma. They were Eastern Alliance Marines, second lieutenants with false transfer orders from Third Platoon. We picked them up, but Pell and McTear shuttled to Vallis Marineris and defected long before we could reach them. What’s worse is that they handpicked your team from some of the best people in the regiment. They figured your group would either do a very efficient job of DXing our own command center or die. Either way, they would gain something.”
“Sir, I can’t believe that Captain Doyle didn’t suspect anything,” said Halitov.
“I can’t fault Doyle. He’s responsible for over one hundred and fifty people. No one in his position would have realized that Heloise and Toma were never members of Third Platoon. Trust me. There are just too many names, too many faces. Which brings me to the second reason why I asked you here.” A dangerous gleam lit in Strident’s eyes, a gleam I had seen before. Another call came in. He rolled those gleaming eyes, took it, put off another meeting, then gathered his thoughts. “The Fourteenth Regiment has been assigned to escort the Eri Flower on Epsilon Eri Three, but I’ve decided that neither of you will be returning to that regiment. I’m transferring you both to the Ninth. That regiment is assigned to the Assault Carrier Auspex, which just happens to be in orbit. Her skipper’s waiting for you.”
“Sir, where are we headed, sir?” I asked.
“Kennedy-Centauri. We’ve already lost Ortorado and Zedong. You, Captain St. Andrew, will be leading your company into Plymouth Colony, while you, Captain Halitov, will be taking yours into Rockwa. Of course, you’ll have full battalion support.” He held up two pins, gold octagons, each bearing a diamond at its center. We knew them as “captain’s gons.”
I stared at the pins but did not dare reach for one. “Sir, may I speak candidly, sir?”
“You may. But be brief.”
“Sir, I’m eighteen years old. If it weren’t for this war, I’d be a first year at South Point. I’ve only commanded one platoon, which, sir, mutinied. I realize that I’m needed, but I don’t believe I’m ready for that much command responsibility, sir.”
“And sir?” Halitov interjected. “I feel the same. I, well,
I’m not sure how to say this, I have…”
Strident waved a hand, then his gaze went distant. He seemed preoccupied by something, and it took another moment for him to return to us. “Mr. Halitov, believe me, we know all about your emotional challenges. We’ve found counselors specializing in your kinds of issues, and I’ve finally located an AAT instructor. You’ll meet her on the Auspex.”
Halitov closed his eyes. “Sir, I’m grateful for the promotion to captain, but I have no desire to lead my own company, at least not now. I realize I’m not supposed to have a choice in this, but I’d deeply appreciate it if you would assign me to Captain St. Andrew’s company. I’d be honored to serve as his XO.”
It had been a while since Halitov had surprised me. We had barely spoken since his refusal to help Dina, and when we did exchange words, I was curt, my tone all business. He could not meet my gaze for more than a few seconds, and his guilt had already drawn lines on his face and around his eyes.
“The problem with your request, Mr. Halitov, is that we’re making every effort to evenly distribute conditioned personnel, who, by the way, represent just nine percent of our fighting force. Two conditioned captains in one company will be viewed as a waste of resources. How do you propose I justify that to my colleagues?”
“Sir, I’m not sure, sir.”
The general lifted his chin at me. “What’s your take on this flood of humility, Mr. St. Andrew?”
I glanced at Halitov. “Sir, while I’m not sure I understand why Mr. Halitov has made this request, I’d feel much more confident taking on the responsibility of company commander if he were my XO. It’s a weak reason, but I think as a team we would be much more effective.”
An aide burst into the room, a young woman who looked pale, waved a tablet, and said something to the general with her eyes. He nodded. She left. Strident’s gaze then alternated between me and Halitov. He leaned back, thought a moment more, then grudgingly nodded. “Very well, then. We can make this work. You’ll report to the Auspex ASAP. I’ll have your new assignments uploaded to your tablets. Any other questions or concerns?”