Soldiers of Callisto (Void Dragon Hunters Book 3)

by Felix R. Savage

  “Of course they didn’t talk to you!” I throw caution to the winds. “Because you’re conspiring with the Offense!”

  As the words leave my mouth, Hardy goes quiet and somehow distant, like he’s here and a million miles away at the same time. For a second he looks more familiar than ever. But I don’t let it distract me.

  “That’s why you shot the God of the Gaps down! Isn’t it? You promised your Offense buddies, not to worry, these Void Dragons will be on your side. And it worked!”

  “That’s so byzantine, it’s ridiculous,” Hardy says angrily.

  “I know who was on your ship when it arrived from Ceres.” I recite the names that are burned into my memory. “Howe, Samuels, Sponaugle, Muramoto, Hoefler, Ilyukhin, Yu, Tran … Scattergood.” I can’t see any reaction in his eyes this time. “Which one are you? I’m guessing you’re not Muramoto, Yu, or Tran. Howe? Hoefler? Could be.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Hardy says abruptly. “I only came to see how you were doing.” He stands up and leaves the room, slamming the door as hard as a hospital door can slam, which is not very hard. And I’m left sitting there with Tancred, heart beating hard.

  He didn’t tell me anything new … and yet it somehow feels like I won.

  But my victory is bitter, because he does know Elsa. And it looks really bad that he refused to admit it.

  An hour or so later, Francie and Patrick come to see me. They’re both in uniform, neat and clean and full of bounce. They smuggle in half a cold pizza and some beers, which are much appreciated. We drink to survival. Judging from the sparkle in their eyes, survival tastes truly sweet to them.

  “The R&R here is something else,” Patrick says. “Know what they’ve got?”

  “A spa and a tennis court,” I say, having trouble picturing Patrick at either one.

  “No, no, over in the officers’ quarters. They got a bowling alley! I got five strikes in a row. Then Smaug set fire to the scoreboard,” he says with a hint of pride, tickling his baby dragon.

  Francie rolls her eyes fondly. “They sell these everywhere,” she says, showing off her Asgard souvenir tote bag, which is serving as a carrier for Pinkie Pie. Is it my imagination, or is the undercurrent of resentment in Francie’s voice when she talks about Pinkie Pie gone? Maybe she doesn’t feel so singled out now that everyone else has a militarily useless dragon, too.

  They fill me in on the various scrapes the unit has gotten into. I half-listen, processing the things Hardy said, the things he didn’t say. Wondering how much Francie and Patrick have figured out for themselves. Wondering what I should tell them, and how.

  Francie breaks into my reverie. “Scatter, you’re scaling new heights of obliviousness.”

  I frown. They do seem oddly cheerful, given that we have failed in our mission and participated in a massive military setback. Oh, and Jeremy is still dead.

  Of course, Francie and Patrick used to serve on the front lines. Their cheerfulness could just be their way of bouncing back. But it doesn’t seem that … superficial?

  “Give me a hint, guys.”

  “Ta dah,” says Patrick, thrusting out his chest.

  Two bars. He’s a captain.

  “You got a commission!” I’m stunned for a second. This is the last thing I was expecting.

  “So did I,” Francie brags, pointing out her first lieutenant’s stripe.

  And I know.

  What to say, how much to tell them. Nothing.

  Hardy has already bought their silence.

  Oh, they probably don’t know he was behind it. But if he can scramble a frigate with a single phone call, he could definitely arrange for two irregular personnel to be reinstated and promoted. To make them happy.

  “Congratulations, guys,” I say, forcing a smile.

  “And that’s not all,” Patrick says. He taps the new platinum earbud in his left ear. It’s a comms headset so high-end, it’s no bigger than an earring. “OK, guys, ready for you.”

  “Surprise!!!”

  The rest of the squad bursts in. All of them are wearing new uniforms. There isn’t a private left in the bunch. This is getting ridiculous … and that’s all I have time to think before they throw a new uniform at me. It lands on Tancred. I retrieve it and check the insignia.

  A oak leaf?

  My mouth hangs open. They’ve made me a lieutenant colonel?

  “Congratulations, Commander Scattergood,” says Elsa, coming in on the heels of the horde, beaming.

  Same Elsa. Same smile that rewarded me for my first perfect math test when I was six. Same gray eyes that lit up with pride when I won the Micro-Mecha design prize in college.

  But I no longer trust the woman behind those eyes.

  It amazes me that that no one else can see how I’ve flash-frozen, or hear the hostility in my tone. “Great to see you, Elsa. Commander of what, anyway?”

  Instead of answering, she says softly, “I got on a ship as soon as I heard about Private Henriquez.” She sits down on the side of my bed. Everyone goes silent and respectful at the mention of the tragedy that kicked this whole mess off. “Of course, I should have guessed, by the time I got here you would have fixed the problem yourselves!”

  She’s over-explaining. Can’t the others tell how fake her concern sounds? She did not get on a ship when she heard about Pvt. Henriquez. She came with Hardy and Strong on the Raimbaut! Her name was on the freaking passenger list! And here she is in the flesh, proving that it was her, not some other unlikely person sharing the name of Scattergood.

  My world is falling apart, but I paste an amiable expression on my face. It wouldn’t be smart to have it out with her now. I need real, solid proof.

  “I dunno about fixed it,” I say. “Giving the Offense a free gift of three hundred Void Dragon eggs is not what I call a resounding success.”

  “Three hundred and sixteen,” Patrick says, gloom momentarily clouding his face.

  Elsa grimaces. “They may never hatch, anyway.”

  How many times have I heard that?

  “So let’s celebrate our successes. Tancred personally destroyed five Offense ships. They can’t take that away from us.”

  I had almost forgotten about that.

  “So, building on that achievement, we’ve got the green light to continue with the project.”

  I can’t help saying, “So Hardy changed his mind about shutting us down?”

  Alarm flashes in her eyes. “There is no Hardy,” she says, sticking to her old line, but I can see I’ve rattled her.

  Francie squashes in beside Elsa. She always has liked and got along with my aunt, and now she’s upset on Elsa’s behalf by my lack of enthusiasm. “You’re a commander, Jay! Smile!” She reaches over and pushes the corners of my mouth up.

  I pull away. “I remember when you were going to go home to your family farm in the States,” I say. “You were going to ask your parents to let you work in the fields.”

  Francie purses her lips.

  Elsa draws a line with her finger underneath the regimental patch on my new dress shirt. It’s not the patch of my old outfit, the 11th Technical Support Regiment. I’ve never seen this patch in my life. It features—

  Me? Tancred says, nosing at it.

  —a dragon.

  “Introducing the 1st Dragon Corps,” Elsa says. “Congratulations, Commander Jay Scattergood.”

  *

  Is it this easy to make me happy? To buy my silence?

  I feel like I’m scrabbling at the edge of a cliff, about to go over.

  The others can feel legitimately proud of their promotions. All they have is suspicions, easily papered over with excuses—it was all a mistake, yadda yadda yadda, or, even subtler, it was all our fault. I think Patrick, for one, genuinely blames himself for the decision to bring the eggs to Callisto. And who can resist the seductive pull of forgiveness?

  But I’m in a different position. I saw that goddamn passenger list. I had Hardy in this room just a few hours ago, sitting
on my bed, admitting to my face that he gave the order to shoot the God of the Gaps down.

  What am I going to do?

  “I wonder what happened to that Marine?” Huifang muses. “The girl who got Jeremy’s dragon.”

  Elsa sits up. “There’s another Void Dragon? Why don’t you kids tell me these things?”

  A glance flits between Francie and Patrick. The suggestion of collusion, small as it is, cheers me up. They were going to leave Sara out of it. They were hoping—what? That she’d get away?

  “Sara,” I say, emerging from my indecision. “Her name was Sara Moon.”

  Again, I’ve chosen to remain silent.

  But this time it is a conscious decision.

  I will play my cards close to my chest, so that I can gather evidence against Hardy … and see him jailed for the rest of his miserable life.

  *

  I’m not really supposed to leave the hospital yet, but they don’t dare say no to a Commander, clad in his brand new dress uniform.

  Booyah.

  So we all trek over to Battle-Raft Nerrivik, temporarily docked at Asgard.

  They don’t fuck around, the Marines.

  They threw Sara straight into detention, in a solitary cell so small that only Tancred and I can fit in with her. The others have to watch on the screen in the hall.

  The first thing I say is, “Here’s your dragon.”

  They had put her newborn Void Dragon in a lockbox in the confiscated property room. I know from experience how dangerous it is to separate a Void Dragon from its companion. The Marines don’t know that. We may just have averted something awful here, which makes it worthwhile in and of itself.

  Sara grabs the baby dragon and presses her to the chest of her orange coverall. Then she looks up at me, eyes glittering—with happiness, not tears, I am relieved to see. “I’m gonna call her Faith,” she says.

  And Jeremy was thinking of Prudence or Charity. All virtue names. What a weird coincidence.

  “I had faith that you would remember me. That you would bring her back to me.”

  “I’m really sorry it took this long,” I say.

  “Meh,” Sara says, recovering from her momentary fit of sincerity. “It’s only been three days. I did three weeks in the brig after our New Year’s party last year. I gotta tell you about that sometime.”

  “Well, we’re springing you out of here today. That is, if you agree.”

  “To what?”

  Her smile’s so bright, I feel like teasing her, the same way she once teased me about Lofn.

  “To leaving the Marines.”

  The smile droops.

  “Losing your seniority.”

  The smile vanishes.

  “Leaving Callisto.”

  A wry twist of the lips.

  “Joining my new outfit.” I point to my shoulder patch.

  “The 1st … what?”

  “Dragon Corps. The attrition rate is unknown as of yet, but anticipated to be pretty high.”

  “Asshole,” she laughs, fake-punching me. “This is, I don’t know what to say! Amazing! But hang on, where’s this outfit based?”

  “We get to pick our own asteroid.”

  “And?”

  I relate to her what Elsa told me. “We’ll be engaging in space combat. It’s time to really see what Tancred can do.” He’s hunkered behind me, neck bent to fit under the ceiling, embarrassed about taking up so much of the cell—but at the reminder of the challenge ahead, he perks up. Lots to eat, Daddy?

  “That’s right, little scaly-butt,” I say out loud. “Fingers crossed, there’ll be lots to eat.”

  “I’m in,” Sara says. “Oh boy, I’m so in.”

  “Awesome.” I don’t know if it’s her smile or Tancred’s anticipation, or both … but I admit I am starting to get excited about this.

  An out-of-the-way asteroid will be the perfect place to watch and wait for Hardy to make one false move.

  THE STORY CONTINUES IN

  EXILES OF THE BELT

  BOOK 4 OF THE VOID DRAGON HUNTERS SERIES.

  See Exiles of the Belt on Amazon

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  READ MORE BY FELIX R. SAVAGE

  An exuberant storyteller with a demented imagination, Felix R. Savage specializes in creating worlds so exciting, you’ll never want to leave.

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  VOID DRAGON HUNTERS

  Military Sci-Fi with Space Dragons

  In 2160, a Void Dragon ate the sun.

  In 2322, eight-year-old Jay Scattergood found a Void Dragon egg in his garden.

  Humanity survived the death of the sun, but now we're under attack by the Offense. These intelligent, aggressive aliens also lost their sun to a Void Dragon. They lost their home planet, too. Earth, now orbiting Jupiter, is still habitable - though much colder than it once was. The Offense will do whatever it takes to destroy humanity and take Earth for themselves.

  Our last hope against the alien aggressors is Jay Scattergood ... and his baby Void Dragon, Tancred.

  Guardians of Jupiter

  Protectors of Earth

  Soldiers of Callisto

  Exiles of the Belt

  Knights of Saturn

  EARTH’S LAST GAMBIT

  A Quartet of Present-Day Science Fiction Technothrillers

  Ripped from the headlines: an alien spaceship is orbiting Europa. Relying only on existing technology, a handful of elite astronauts must confront the threat to Earth’s future, on their own, millions of miles from home.

  Can the chosen few overcome technological limitations and their own weaknesses and flaws? Will Earth’s Last Gambit win survival for the human race?

  The Signal And The Boys (prequel story, subscriber exclusive)

  Freefall

  Lifeboat

  Shiplord

  Killshot

  EXTINCTION PROTOCOL

  Hard Science Fiction With a Chilling Twist

  Humanity has reached out into the stars - and found a ruthless enemy.

  It took us two hundred years to establish fifteen colonies on the closest habitable planets to Earth. It took the Ghosts only 20 years to destroy them. Navy pilot Colm Mackenzie is no stranger to the Ghosts. He has witnessed first-hand the mayhem and tragedy they leave in their wake. No one knows where they came from, or how they travel, or what they want. They know only one thing for sure:

  Ghosts leave no survivors.

  Save From Wrath (short story, subscriber exclusive)

  The Chemical Mage

  The Nuclear Druid

  THE SOL SYSTEM RENEGADES SERIES

  Near-Future Hard Science Fiction

  A genocidal AI is devouring our solar system. Can a few brave men and women save humanity?

  In the year 2288, humanity stands at a crossroads between space colonization and extinction. Packed with excitement, heartbreak, and unforgettable characters, the Sol System Renegades series tells a sweeping tale of struggle and deliverance.

  Keep Off The Grass (short origin story)

  Crapkiller (prequel novella, subscriber exclusive)

  1. The Galapagos Incident

  2. The Vesta Conspiracy

  3. The Mercury Rebellion

  A Very Merry Zero-Gravity Christmas (short story)

  4. The Luna Deception

  5. The Phobos Maneuver

  6. The Mars Shock

  7. The Callisto Gambit

  THE RELUCTANT ADVENTURES OF FLETCHER CONNOLLY ON THE INTERSTELLAR RAILROAD

  Near-Future Non-Hard Science Fiction

  An Irishman in space. Untold hoards of alien technological relics waiting to be discovered. What could possibly go wrong?


  Rubbish With Names (prequel story, subscriber exclusive)

  Skint Idjit

  Intergalactic Bogtrotter

  Banjaxed Ceili

  Supermassive Blackguard