by Allen Steele
I started to reply, but something got stuck in my throat and I had to fight to keep from throwing up. So I just nodded, even though it was unlikely that Col. Thahn would see the movement of my head. Yet apparently he did, because he lowered his gun and lay a hand upon my shoulder.
"I'm sorry. If we had arrived sooner, we may have been able to save him." He hesitated. "Would you tell me your names, please?"
For a moment or two, I was tempted to tell him to...well, I don't know what I wanted him to do, just that I didn't care to answer any questions from him. But we were in a combat situation, and this was the man who'd just saved my life. I needed to put my grief on hold and deal with matters at hand.
"Jamey Barlowe, Ranger Second Class." I looked over at Nicole. "This is Nicole Doyle, also Ranger Second Class." Nicole didn't respond; she barely seemed to notice either of us. "You...you're from Moon Dragon, aren't you?"
A dumb question with an obvious answer, but Thahn didn't seem to care. "Yes, but we didn't come from there. When it became apparent that the Americans were sending a military force to the Moon, my team was dispatched to Scott Crater to protect our ice mining facility. And when we saw that they were invading your station instead, I decided to...shall we say, intervene? Just in case there was need for us to back up your own defense force."
Col. Thahn spoke English very well, with hardly any accent; perhaps he'd been educated in the United States before the PSU cut its ties with the west. Although I was exhausted to my very bones, I stood up to face him. "I'm glad you did. I..." I took a deep breath. "You saved my life. Hers, too. Thank you."
"You're welcome, Ranger Barlowe. As I said, I'm sorry that we didn't arrive earlier." He pointed in the direction of the landing pad, and for the first time I noticed the squat form of a long-range transport that faintly resembled a Pegasus. It had touched down not far from the ferry that had brought the Cyclops team; I figured that it must have landed while I wasn't looking. "Now, again...who is your commanding officer?"
I let out my breath. "Mikel Borakov...but he's dead. They shot him when he went out to negotiate a cease-fire. The second-in-command was Greg Thomas, but..." I shook my head. "I don't know what happened to him. He was with me, but he...he..."
"I see. Just a moment please." He stopped talking to me, but I could see his lips moving. Apparently he'd switched to another channel and was speaking with someone else from his team. A few seconds went by, then his voice returned. "My men have located another survivor, Mahmoud Chawla. Is he superior to you in rank?"
"Yes, he is." It took a moment for what Thahn just said to sink in. "Another survivor? How...how many are there?"
"Counting him, Ranger Doyle, and yourself...only six. And two of them are wounded." Col. Thahn paused again to ask another question in his own language. "That doesn't include the pilot and copilot of your transport," he added after a moment. "It's amazing that they survived as well. What they did was very brave, but very foolhardy."
I wasn't even thinking about Gordie and Sam. What the colonel had just told me caused my legs to go weak. Half of my Ranger team was dead. Greg was probably gone, and I had little doubt that Toji was, too. And Logan, my best friend...
"We've captured three members of the force that attacked you," Thahn went on. "Including their leader."
He gestured behind me, and I turned to see another PSU soldier standing guard over a figure in a skinsuit who lay face-down on the ground, arms spread out before him. His Cyclops suit rested nearby, its hatch open; when I saw it, I realized that the man on the ground was Eagle. The guy who'd murdered Mikel in cold blood, and probably killed Logan, too.
"My people have ordered the others to climb out of their suits as well," Thahn said. "If you wish, you can be present while I interrogate them."
"Yes," I said, "I'd like that very much."
Three PSU soldiers escorted the prisoners into the station, where they stood watch over the remaining members of Liberty One. The hab modules were too small for everyone to crowd inside, so once Gordie landed the Pegasus at the station again, the two wounded Rangers were carried into the transport; once it was pressurized, they received medical treatment from another survivor.
While this was going on, Mahmoud, Nicole, and I went about the grim business of recovering our dead. As I suspected, Greg had been killed; his suit had been punctured by a bullet and he'd decompressed before he could seal the hole. Toji hadn't made it, either. They were among the bodies we dragged over to the Pegasus and laid out in a row. There was no choice but to leave them in their suits; their corpses would have been mutilated by the airless cold, and we wanted to bring them back to Apollo.
Nicole said nothing while we performed that awful duty. She remained quiet the entire time. Yet when it was done and Mahmoud turned to go into the station, she chose to remain with Logan's body. I lay a hand on her shoulder and she responded with a nod, but her eyes never left Logan.
I was numb. It felt as if, only a few minutes ago, he and I had been talking about our home town swim team. Now he lay before me, and all I could see of him was his face, tinted by the glass of his helmet faceplate. His death was unreal, an abstract fact that I hadn't quite absorbed. My best friend was dead? No, that wasn't true. This was just some guy in a moonsuit. Logan was somewhere else. Any minute now, he'd be back...
"Jamey?" Mahmoud's voice was low. "Do you want to come with me? To interrogate the prisoners?"
"Yeah...sure." There was little I could say or do for Nicole. There wasn't even much I could do for myself. So I left her with Logan and followed Mahmoud to the airlock.
The three Cyclops soldiers were seated in a row on the ready-room floor. Their helmets had been removed, but they still wore their skinsuits. The PSU soldiers standing above them had taken turns removing their moonsuits; when Mahmoud and I cycled through, we found them standing guard over the prisoners, each with a rifle aimed at their heads. The Cyclops team was quiet when we came in, but Col. Thahn had already begun their interrogation, and it was obvious that they were scared.
Thahn was younger than I thought he'd be. Although he was probably only in his midtwenties, he had the no-nonsense look of a military professional. I was glad that I was his friend, at least until he proved otherwise. Two of the Liberty One guys were about the same age as Thahn, while the one in the middle was in his early fifties, heavy-set and with a handle-bar mustache. They all had cold, predatory eyes. I was in the company of killers.
Thahn pointed to the two younger men. "Those are Raven and Sparrow, and this one--" he meant the man in the middle, "is Eagle, their leader. They won't give us their names, only their team designations."
"Figures," I said. "Marines are tough guys. They won't talk."
Eagle said nothing, but his lips compressed into a contemptuous sneer. "You're mistaken, Mr. Barlowe," Thahn said. "They're not Marines. In fact, I don't believe they belong to any American armed service." He paused. "And they will talk."
"Not Marines?" Mahmoud was startled. "How do you...?"
"There is no American military insignia on their armor," Thahn said. I nodded, remembering that I had noticed the same thing when the Cyclops team approached the station. "In fact, there's no identification of any sort. When my team accessed Eagle's suit computer, we discovered that its memory was scrubbed just before he was captured. We're still checking the other suits, but I imagine we'll find that they did likewise." He regarded Eagle with merciless eyes. "You're trying to cover your tracks, but I assure you that it won't work."
"So if they aren't Marines," I asked, "then who are they?"
"That's what we will find out." Thahn's gaze never moved from Eagle. "Speak. Tell us who you work for...now."
Eagle stared back at him. "Go to hell."
Thahn looked at one of his men and quietly nodded. The soldier walked forward, grabbed Sparrow by his arm, and roughly yanked him to his feet. "Take him to the airlock," Thahn said, "and throw him out."
Sparrow squawked, tried to pull away. The PSU soldier
slammed the butt of his rifle into his stomach, and when he doubled over, grabbed his suit's neck ring and began to drag him across the room.
I don't know whether Thahn was bluffing or not; either way, he was very persuasive. Eagle let out his breath and closed his eyes in resignation. "Okay...stop," he murmured. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
"Wise decision." Thahn nodded again to his soldier, and Sparrow was thrown back against the wall beside Eagle and Raven. "Where are you from? Who sent you here?"
"Ball North IU."
"Ball North?" Thahn shook his head. "I've never heard of this."
"I have." Mahmoud's eyes were wide with astonishment. "Independent military contractors. They'll hire out to anyone who will pay them. Covert missions, black ops...the sort of stuff governments want to get done, but don't necessarily want to do themselves."
"What does IU mean?" I asked.
"'Independent Underwriters'...or 'International Undertakers,' if you believe what's been written about them." Mahmoud let out his breath. "Really nasty outfit. There's no job too dirty, if the money is right."
"Mercenaries." Thahn's tone was icy. "Where did you get your equipment? Cyclops armor is too sophisticated for such as you."
Eagle went silent, but Raven spoke up. "From the same people who hired us...the US government." He glanced warily at the airlock; he was obviously afraid that he'd go through it without a helmet if he didn't confess. "They supplied us with the suits, trained us how to use them, provided us with transportation."
"And your mission?"
"Take this station, kill everyone who got in our way." Raven looked down at the floor. "We were told not to leave anyone alive."
I felt a chill colder than the crater outside. Just then, I wanted to pitch all three of these guys out the airlock. "Why did the American government hire you?" Thahn asked. "Why didn't they simply send their own troops instead?"
"I don't know," Eagle said. "Maybe they couldn't get the Marines to attack a base where they knew there would be American civilians. Or maybe they just wanted deniability." He shrugged. "No one told us...not me or my men, at least...and I didn't ask."
"How many more of your people were sent here?"
Eagle stared at him. "You don't know?" When Thahn didn't answer, he glanced at Raven and Sparrow, then shook his head. "Sorry, pal. I don't rat out my comrades."
Thahn was quiet for a few moments. I thought he was going to give his men the order to blow out Eagle, Sparrow, and Raven, but instead he turned to Mahmoud. "Have you been in communication with Apollo since you've been here?"
"No. We've been observing strict radio silence, so..." Mahmoud stopped. His face went pale, and without another word he bolted from the ready-room, nearly colliding with the colonel in his haste to reach the adjacent control room.
"I don't understand," I said. "If there are others like them here, then why haven't they attacked us?"
Once again, a cold smile appeared on Eagle's face. It vanished when he met Thahn's gaze; he quickly looked away, but the colonel was no longer paying attention to them. "The attack on this station may have been only one part of their operation," Thahn said to me. "They may have had another objective as well."
"Another objective?" I stared back at him. "What other objective could they...?"
My voice trailed off. Thahn didn't reply, nor did he need to. The answer was obvious.
Eagle's words were still sinking in when Mahmoud reappeared in the control room door. "Get your gear, Jamey," he said as he headed for the airlock. "We're pulling out right now."
I stared at him. "Is it Apollo? Did you get in touch with them?"
"I just tried...and there was no answer."
As soon as I saw Apollo, I knew a lot of people had died there.
"Oh, my God." Nicole was sitting beside me in the Pegasus. She had been quiet during most of the flight from Cabeus; at one point I'd put my arm around her and let her cry against my shoulder. Now she was staring past me out the porthole beside us, and both of us stunned by what lay below.
At first glimpse it seemed as if Apollo was undamaged. As the Pegasus flew in low over Ptolemaeus, it became evident that this was only an illusion. Something had ripped through the northwest side of Apollo's crater dome, leaving a long, jagged tear that extended from the crater wall almost halfway to the sun window. An explosion, no doubt caused by a missile. Yet it couldn't have been a direct hit; otherwise Apollo would have been obliterated. So where did they come from...?
Then I looked away from the dome and felt my heart stop. Where Ag Dome 2 once lay, there was only a big, black hole surrounded by debris. The blast had badly damaged the dome, but it had completely destroyed one of the colony's farms.
The one where Melissa worked.
"Put it down, Gordie." My mouth was dry. "Put it down and let me get out."
"Can't do that, Jamey." His voice came to my headset from the cockpit. "I've been instructed to land near the industrial park. The landing fields aren't safe, and..."
"I mean it, man. Put it down now!" I was already reaching beneath the seat for my helmet. "I need to get to Ag Dome 2. My sister was there. She..."
"Jamey...stop." Nicole's voice was quiet but insistent. "You know he can't let you get out on your own. We'd have to depressurize the whole module."
She was right. After the Pegasus lifted off from Cabeus, Gordie had repressurized the passenger module so that we could remove the injured Rangers from their suits and tend to their wounds. They lay upon stretchers on the module floor; a blood bag was suspended above one of them, and the other guy was so heavily bandaged that he could barely move. Getting them back into their moonsuits was out of the question; we would have to wait until a bus came to pick us up, so that we could carry them straight to Apollo General.
Once again, my gaze involuntarily turned toward the tarp-covered forms that lay in the back of the module. Logan, Mikel, Greg, Toji, the two other Rangers who'd perished at Cabeus...they were all back there, silent fellow travelers. Gordie had wanted to leave the bodies at Cabeus, if only temporarily, saying that we didn't have time to load them into the Pegasus. Nicole wouldn't have it, though; we'd take our fallen comrades back to Apollo, not leave them with the Ball North mercenaries who'd killed them. Colonel Thahn had volunteered to take custody of Eagle, Sparrow, and Raven until someone at Apollo figured out what to do about them; it didn't seem right to leave behind six dead Rangers, too.
"Yeah...okay, sure." Tearing my gaze away from the bodies, I looked over at Mahmoud. "Anything more from MainOps?"
Mahmoud was huddled over the shortwave transceiver, its headset clasped against his ear. "Only what Gordie just said," he replied, shaking his head. "The landing fields aren't safe, so we're to land east of the park and wait for a bus to pick us up."
I nodded. The shortwave had become our sole link with Apollo, and even then we hadn't been able to use it until we were within a few hundred miles of Ptolemaeus. Under interrogation, Eagle had reluctantly told us that Ball North's strategy had included taking out the ISC lunar communications satellite, thus severing Apollo's long-range radio link with anyone who might be at Cabeus. This would happen just before Liberty Two, Ball North's second Cyclops team, attacked Apollo, which was timed to be simultaneous with the assault on Cabeus Station.
Fortunately, we still had the emergency transceiver as a backup. Whoever was handling communication at the Main Operations Center wasn't telling us very much, though. They were probably worried that our transmissions were being monitored. If so, that could only mean one thing: there were enemy forces on the ground, and they were still capable of doing us harm.
The Pegasus banked left as Gordie made a port turn. Through the window, I saw Apollo pass beneath us, and noticed that sun window had gone dark. Apparently the reflector ring had been knocked out, leaving the solarium--whatever remained of it--in darkness. Then there was a rumble as the VTOLs kicked in, and a vibration passed through the hull as the transport made its final approach.
>
We had a rough landing. Gordie came in fast, and the Pegasus slammed down on its landing gear so hard that Hans Geller, the unhurt Ranger tending to the wounded, swore at him through the comlink. The ceiling lights flickered and went dark, replaced a second later by the amber glow of the emergency lamps. A moment later, the steady hiss of the air vents suddenly ceased as well.
"Killing all power until the bus gets here," Gordie said. "Don't want to give their mortars something to lock onto." Then there was a click as the comlink went silent; he wasn't taking chances with the radio either.
Gazing through the windows, I could see the clustered domes of the industrial park. Its floodlights had been turned off, and nothing moved near it. On the other side of the Pegasus, Apollo loomed as a vast, dark wall, its outer windows blacked out. Over the past few months, I'd become accustomed to the constant bustle of men and machines around the crater. Now it was as if I was looking at a dead city, lifeless and abandoned, populated only by ghosts.
I was just beginning to get spooked when I spotted a bus approaching us from Loop Road. Bouncing upon its tandem wheels, it came toward us faster than I'd ever seen a lunar ground vehicle move before. Just behind it was an open-top rover, with two Rangers carrying carbines hunched behind the driver. Once the two vehicles were within ten yard of the Pegasus, the bus fishtailed around until its rear was pointed toward the transport. As it began to back toward us, the rover came to a halt. The Rangers jumped out of the back and trotted alongside the bus, carbines raised and ready to fire.
A hard jolt as the bus connected with the Pegasus's port side, and barely ten seconds later the hatch sprang open. The last person I'd expected to see was Mr. Garcia, yet that was who was standing on the other side. The Chief wore a skinsuit, its helmet faceplate open, and he was in no mood for small talk.
"C'mon, c'mon...move it!" he snapped. "Hustle!"