by John Scalzi
"The Sparrowhawk?" Jensen said. "No shit."
"What about the Sparrowhawk?" I asked. The name was unusual; battalion-strength spaceships were traditionally named after midsize cities.
"Ghost Brigades, Perry," Jensen said. "CDF Special Forces. Industrial-strength motherfuckers."
"I've never heard of them before," I said. Actually I thought I had, at some point, but the when and where escaped me.
"The CDF saves them for special occasions," Jensen said. "They don't play nice with others. It'd be nice to have them there when we got onto the planet, though. Save us the trouble of dying."
"It'd be nice, but it's probably not going to happen," Keyes said. "This is our show, boys and girls. For better or worse."
The Modesto skipped into Coral orbital space ten hours later and in its first few seconds of arrival was struck by six missiles fired at close range by a Rraey battle cruiser. The Modesto's aft starboard engine array shattered, sending the ship wildly tumbling ass over head. My squad and Alan's were packed into a transport shuttle when the missiles hit; the force of the blast's sudden inertial shift slammed several of our soldiers into the sides of the transport. In the shuttle bay, loose equipment and material were flung across the bay, striking one of the other transports but missing ours. The shuttles, locked down by electromagnets, thankfully stayed put.
I activated Asshole to check the ship's status. The Modesto was severely damaged and active scanning by the Rraey ship indicated it was lining up for another series of missiles.
"It's time to go," I yelled to Fiona Eaton, our pilot.
"I don't have clearance from Control," she said.
"In about ten seconds we're going to get hit by another volley of missiles," I said. "There's your fucking clearance." Fiona growled.
Alan, who was also plugged into the Modesto mainframe, yelled from the back. "Missiles away," he said. "Twenty-six seconds to impact."
"Is that enough time to get out?" I asked Fiona.
"We'll see," she said, and opened a channel to the other shuttles. "This is Fiona Eaton, piloting Transport Six. Be advised I will perform emergency bay door procedure in three seconds. Good luck." She turned to me. "Strap in now," she said, and punched a red button.
The bay doors were outlined with a sharp shock of light; the crack of the doors blasting away was lost in the roar of escaping air as the doors tumbled out. Everything not strapped down launched out the hole; beyond the debris, the star field lurched sickeningly as the Modesto spun. Fiona fed thrust to the engines and waited just long enough for the debris to clear the bay door before cutting the electromagnetic tethers and launching the shuttle out the door. Fiona compensated for the Modesto's spin as she exited, but just barely; we scraped the roof going out.
I accessed the launch bay's video feed. Other shuttles were blasting out of the bay doors by twos and threes. Five made it out before the second volley of missiles crashed into the ship, abruptly changing the trajectory of the Modesto's spin and smashing several shuttles already hovering into the shuttle bay floor. At least one exploded; debris struck the camera and knocked it out.
"Cut your BrainPal feed to the Modesto," Fiona said. "They can use it to track us. Tell your squads. Verbally." I did.
Alan came forward. "We've got a couple of minor wounds back there," he said, motioning to our soldiers, "but nothing too serious. What's the plan?"
"I've got us headed toward Coral and I've cut the engines," Fiona said. "They're probably looking for thrust signatures and BrainPal transmissions to lock missiles on, so as long as we look dead, they might leave us alone long enough for us to get into the atmosphere."
"Might?" Alan said.
"If you've got a better plan, I'm all ears," Fiona said.
"I have no idea what's going on," Alan said, "so I'm happy to go with your plan."
"What the hell happened back there anyway?" Fiona said. "They hit us as we came out of skip drive. There's no way they could have known where we would be."
"Maybe we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Alan said.
"I don't think so," I said, and pointed out the window. "Look."
I pointed to a Rraey battle cruiser to port that was sparkling as missiles thrust away from the cruiser. At extreme starboard, a CDF cruiser popped into existence. A few seconds later the missiles connected, hitting the CDF cruiser broadside.
"No fucking way," Fiona said.
"They know exactly where our ships are coming out," Alan said. "It's an ambush."
"How the fuck are they doing that?" Fiona demanded. "What the fuck is going on?"
"Alan?" I said. "You're the physicist."
Alan stared at the damaged CDF cruiser, now listing and struck again by another volley. "No ideas, John. This is all new to me."
"This sucks," Fiona said.
"Keep it together," I said. "We're in trouble and losing it is not going to help."
"If you've got a better plan, I'm all ears," Fiona said again.
"Is it okay to access my BrainPal if I'm not trying to reach the Modesto?" I asked.
"Sure," Fiona said. "As long as no transmissions leave the shuttle, we're fine."
I accessed Asshole and pulled up a geographic map of Coral. "Well," I said, "I think we can pretty much say the attack on the coral-mining facility is canceled for today. Not enough of us made it off the Modesto for a realistic assault, and I don't think all of us are going to make it to the planet surface in one piece. Not every pilot's going to be as quick on her feet as you are, Fiona."
Fiona nodded, and I could tell she relaxed a little. Praise is always a good thing, especially in a crisis.
"Okay, here's the new plan," I said, and transmitted the map to Fiona and Alan. "Rraey forces are concentrated on the coral reefs and in the Colonial cities, here on this coast. So we go here"—I pointed to the big fat middle of Coral's largest continent—"hide in this mountain range and wait for the second wave."
"If they come," Alan said. "A skip drone is bound to get back to Phoenix. They'll know that the Rraey know they're coming. If they know that, they might not come at all."
"Oh, they'll come," I said. "They might not come when we want them to, is all. We have to be ready to wait for them. The good news here is Coral is human friendly. We can eat off the land for as long as we need to."
"I'm not in the mood to colonize," Alan said.
"It's not permanent," I said. "And it's better than the alternative."
"Good point," Alan said.
I turned to Fiona. "What do you need to do to get us to where we're going in one piece?"
"A prayer," she said. "We're in good shape now because we look like floating junk, but anything that hits the atmosphere that's larger than a human body is going to be tracked by Rraey forces. As soon as we start maneuvering, they're going to notice us."
"How long can we stay up here?" I asked.
"Not that long," Fiona said. "No food, no water, and even with our new, improved bodies, there's a couple dozen of us in here and we're going to run out of fresh air pretty fast."
"How long after we hit the atmosphere are you going to have to start driving?" I asked.
"Soon," she said. "If we start tumbling, I'll never get control of it again. We'll just fall down until we die."
"Do what you can," I said. She nodded. "All right, Alan," I said. "Time to alert the troops about the change in plan."
"Here we go," Fiona said, and hit the thrusters. The force of the acceleration pinned me back into the copilot's seat. No longer falling to the surface of Coral, we were aiming ourselves directly at it.
"Chop coming," Fiona said as we plunged into the atmosphere. The shuttle rattled like a maraca.
The instrumentation board let out a ping. "Active scanning," I said. "We're being tracked."
"Got it," Fiona said, banking. "We have some high clouds coming up in a few seconds," she said. "They might help to confuse them."
"Do they usually?" I asked.
"No," sh
e said, and flew into them anyway.
We came out several klicks east and were pinged again. "Still tracking," I said. "Aircraft 350 klicks out and closing."
"Going to get as close to the ground as I can before they get on top of us," she said. "We can't outrace them or outshoot them. The best we can hope is to get near the ground and hope some of their missiles hit the treetops and not us."
"That's not very encouraging," I said.
"I'm not in the encouragement business today," Fiona said. "Hold on." We dove sickeningly.
The Rraey aircraft were on us presently. "Missiles," I said. Fiona lurched left and tumbled us toward the ground. One missile overflew and trailed away; the other slammed into a hilltop as we crested.
"Nice," I said, and then nearly bit off my tongue as a third missile detonated directly behind us, knocking the shuttle out of control. A fourth missile concussed and shrapnel tore into the side of the shuttle; in the roaring of the air I could hear some of my men screaming.
"Going down," Fiona said, and struggled to right the shuttle. She was headed toward a small lake at an incredibly high speed. "We're going to hit the water and crash," she said. "Sorry."
"You did good," I said, and then the nose of the shuttle hit the surface of the lake.
Wrenching, tearing sounds as the nose of the shuttle ripped downward, shearing off the pilot's compartment from the rest of the shuttle. A brief register of my squad and Alan's as their compartment flies spinning away—a still shot with mouths open, screams silent in all the other noise, the roar as it flies over the shuttle nose that is already fraying apart as it whirls over the water. The tight, impossible spins as the nose sheds metal and instrumentation. The sharp pain of something striking my jaw and taking it away with it. Gurgling as I try to scream, gray Smart-Blood flung from the wound by centrifugal force. An unintentional glance at Fiona, whose head and right arm are somewhere behind us.
A tang of metal as my seat breaks off from the rest of the pilot's compartment and I am skipping on my back toward an outcropping of rock, my chair lazily spinning me in counterclockwise direction as my chair back bounces, bounces, bounces toward the stone. A quick and dizzying change in momentum as my right leg strikes the outcropping followed by a yellow-white burst of two-hundred-proof pain as the femur snaps like a pretzel stick. My foot swings directly up where my jaw used to be and I become perhaps the first person in the history of man to kick himself in his own uvula. I arc over dry land and come to ground somewhere where branches are still falling because the passenger compartment of the shuttle has just crashed through. One of the branches comes down heavily across my chest and breaks at least three of my ribs. After kicking myself in my own uvula, this is strangely anticlimactic.
I look up (I have no choice) and see Alan above me, hanging upside down, the splintered end of a tree branch supporting his torso by wedging itself into the space where his liver should be. SmartBlood is dripping off his forehead onto my neck. I see his eyes twitch, registering me. Then I get a message on my BrainPal.
You look terrible — he sends.
I can't respond. I can only stare.
I hope I can see the constellations where I'm going — he sends. He sends it again. He sends it again. He doesn't send it after that.
Chittering. Rough pads gripping my arm. Asshole recognizes the chittering and beams me a translation.
— This one yet lives.
—Leave it. It will die soon. And the green ones aren't good eating. They're not ripe yet.
Snorting, which Asshole translates as [laughter].
"Holy fuck, would you look at this," someone says. "This son of a bitch is alive."
Another voice. Familiar. "Let me see."
Silence. The familiar voice again. "Get this log off him. We're taking him back."
"Jesus Christ, boss," the first voice says. "Look at him. You ought to just put a fucking bullet in his brain. It'd be the merciful thing to do."
"We were told to bring back survivors," the familiar voice says. "Guess what, he survived. He's the only one that survived."
"If you think this qualifies as surviving."
"Are you done?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good. Now move the goddamn branch. The Rraey are going to be on our ass real soon."
Opening my eyes is like trying to lift metal doors. What allows me to do it is the blasting pain I feel as the branch is moved off my torso. My eyes fly open and I aspirate in the jawless equivalent of a scream.
"Christ!" the first voice says, and I see it's a man, blond, flinging away the massive branch. "He's awake!"
A warm hand on the side of what's left of my face. "Hey," the familiar voice says. "Hey. You're all right now. It's okay. You're safe now. We're taking you back. It's okay. You're okay."
Her face comes into view. I know the face. I was married to it.
Kathy has come for me.
I weep. I know I'm dead. I don't mind.
I begin to slide away.
"You ever see this guy before?" I hear the blond guy ask.
"Don't be stupid," I hear Kathy say. "Of course not."
I'm gone.
Into another universe.
PART III
THIRTEEN
"Oh, you're awake," someone said to me as I opened my eyes. "Listen, don't try to speak. You're immersed in solution. You've got a breathing tube in your neck. And you don't have a jaw."
I glanced around. I was floating in a bath of liquid, thick, warm and translucent; beyond the tub I could see objects but couldn't focus on any of them. As promised, a breathing tube snaked from a panel at the side of the bath toward my neck; I tried to follow it all the way to my body, but my field of vision was blocked by an apparatus surrounding the lower half of my head. I tried to touch it, but I couldn't move my arms. That worried me.
"Don't worry about that," the voice said. "We've turned off your ability to move. Once you're out of the tub, we'll switch you back on again. Another couple of days. You still have access to your BrainPal, by the way. If you want to communicate, use that. That's how we're talking to you right now."
Where the fuck am I — I sent. And what happened to me—
"You're at the Brenneman Medical Facility, above Phoenix," the voice said. "Best care anywhere. You're in intensive care. I'm Dr. Fiorina, and I've been taking care of you since you got here. As for what happened to you, well, let's see. First off, you're in good shape now. So don't worry. Having said that, you lost your jaw, your tongue, most of your right cheek and ear. Your right leg was snapped off halfway down your femur; your left one suffered multiple fractures and your left foot was missing three toes and the heel—we think those were gnawed off. The good news there was that your spinal cord was severed below the rib cage, so you probably didn't feel much of that. Speaking of ribs, six were broken, one of which punctured your gallbladder, and you suffered general internal bleeding. Not to mention sepsis and a host of other general and specific infections brought on by having open wounds for days."
I thought I was dead — I sent. Dying, anyway—
"Since you're no longer in real danger of dying, I think I can tell that by all rights, you really should be dead," Dr. Fiorina said. "If you were an unmodified human, you would be dead. Thank your SmartBlood for keeping you alive; it clotted up before you could bleed out and kept your infections in check. It was a close thing, though. If you hadn't been found when you were, you probably would have been dead shortly after that. As it was, when they got you back to the Sparrowhawk they shoved you into a stasis tube to get you here. They couldn't do much for you on the ship. You needed specialized care."
I saw my wife — I sent. She was the one who rescued me—
"Is your wife a soldier?"
She's been dead for years—
"Oh," said Dr. Fiorina. Then, "Well, you were pretty far gone. Hallucinations aren't that unusual at that point. The bright tunnel and dead relatives and all of that. Listen, Corporal, your body still needs a lot of
work, and it's easier for it to get done while you're asleep. There's nothing for you to do in there but float. I'm going to put you into sleep mode again for a while. The next time you wake up, you'll be out of the tub, and enough of your jaw will have grown back for you to have a real conversation. All right?"
What happened to my squad — I sent. We were in a crash—
"Sleep now," Dr. Fiorina said. "We can talk more when you're out of the tub."
I started to craft a truly irritated response but was hit by a wave of fatigue. I was out before I could think about how quickly I was going out.
"Hey, look who's back," this new voice said. "The man too dumb to die."
This time I wasn't floating in a vat of goo. I glanced over and made out where the voice was coming from.
"Harry," I said, as well as I could through an immobile jaw.
"The same," he said, bowing slightly
"Sorry I can't get up," I mumbled. "I'm a little banged up."
"'A little banged up,' he says," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "Christ on a pony. There was more of you missing than was there, John. I know. I saw them haul your carcass back up off of Coral. When they said you were still alive my jaw dropped to the floor."
"Funny," I said.
"Sorry," Harry said. "No pun intended. But you were almost unrecognizable, John. A mess of parts. Don't take this the wrong way, but I prayed you would die. I couldn't imagine they could piece you back together like this."
"Glad to disappoint you," I said.
"Glad to be disappointed," he said, and then someone else entered the room.
"Jesse," I said.
Jesse came around the bed and gave me a peck on the cheek. "Welcome back to the land of the living, John," she said, and then stepped back. "Look at us, together again. The three musketeers."
"Two and a half musketeers, anyway," I said.
"Don't be morbid," Jesse said. "Dr. Fiorina says you're going to make a full recovery. Your jaw should be completely grown by tomorrow, and the leg will be another couple days after that. You'll be skipping around in no time."
I reached down and felt my right leg. It was all there, or at least felt all there. I pulled back the bedcovers to get a better look, and there it was: my leg. Sort of. Right below the knee, there was a verdant welt. Above the welt my leg looked like my leg; below it, it looked like a prosthesis.