They were less clean by the time the comm chimed. They ignored it until the chime changed to the “priority” buzz.
Mitchie rolled out of bed and grabbed her towel off the floor. “This better be real,” she muttered as she wrapped it around herself.
The “accept” button produced an image of a Fusion Marine Colonel-General. She came to attention, or as close as she could come without dropping the towel.
“Commander Long,” said the general. “I apologize for waking you. A situation is developing in the spacehead.”
“No problem, sir,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“The number of seriously wounded has exceeded the capacity of the field clinic. Also, the head surgeon reports some need care in base facilities if they’re going to survive.”
Dice roll, incoming, thought Mitchie.
“The Navy hasn’t been able to get ships into atmosphere without losing them to info subversion,” continued the general. “The only way we can evacuate them is with an analog ship. Everyone I talked to said your ship is the best one for the mission.”
He took a deep breath. “Commander, can you rescue my wounded men?”
Mitchie thought, as an experiment, of saying no. But she could barely think it. She’d never be able to say it. “Yes, sir. We’ll do our best.”
Relief flashed across the general’s face. “Thank you, Commander. I’ll have the evac gear moved onto your ship.” He cut the connection.
She walked back to the bed, towelless. “I guess that promise didn’t last very long. Sorry.”
Guo smiled. “You hesitated long enough for two other captains to jump in. Now we need the bosses to give the others a chance.” He shoved a foot into his jumpsuit.
“You don’t have to come on this mission if you don’t want.”
He kissed her. “If you’re on it, I do have to.”
***
Setta had wrangled a large cabin for the two of them. Hiroshi sprawled across the bed, glorying in not hanging over the edge. “We need to make a double cabin on the Chamberlain,” he said. “Like the Skipper and Chief have. Then we could have a real bed.”
She giggled. “I think they’d want us to be married before we start cutting any bulkheads.”
“Maybe. They can’t throw stones about fraternization. I wish we could set a date.”
“Does ‘Next time we’re on Bonaventure or Shishi plus a week’ count as setting it?”
Hiroshi laughed. “Might make the captain happy but it doesn’t let my family make travel plans. Or hosting plans. Doing stuff on short notice is expensive.”
Setta glared at him. “Expensive? Didn’t you read your last bank report?”
“No, I trust you to handle that stuff. Why?”
“Because you can afford to fly all your cousins to any planet you choose.”
“Really?” said Hiroshi.
“That stuff I bought from the terraformers is selling now that Bonaventure is rebuilding. The latest from my broker is she sold the two genetic analyzers. First one to a hospital. After word got out three companies fought a bidding war over the other so they could reverse engineer it. Anyway—whatever you want, you can afford it, and if you can’t I can.”
“Ooh. We could have a fancy wedding.” His eyes shifted focus beyond the ceiling. “I’d like to have Imperial Honors for you.”
“What’s that? An artillery salute?”
“No, as I lead you to the altar we pass under an arch, one side officers holding their swords, the other court ladies with flowered boughs. I’ve only seen it once but it’s lovely.”
Setta visualized it. “Sure.”
“As long as it doesn’t take too much money to make it happen. It’d be nice to retire after the war.”
“Trust me, lover, you don’t need your centurion pay any more.”
The cabin’s comm beeped to announce a message. Setta checked it. “Huh. Recalled to ship, be there in ninety minutes. Must be time to run another load of missiles out to the fleet.”
Hiroshi said, “If we only have ninety minutes, let’s not waste them.”
She smiled and climbed back into the bed.
Demeter System, acceleration 10 m/s2
Mitchie closed the Captain’s Bible. “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Hiroshi pulled Setta close for a well-practiced smooch. The watchers, mostly medical staff, cheered.
Mitchie drifted back to lean on one of the temporary bunks welded to the cargo hold deck. The senior doctor of the evacuation team joined her.
“Do you perform many weddings, Captain?” he asked.
“No. The last time we had one on this ship I was the bride.”
“Under happier circumstances, I hope.”
She compared them. Setta and Hiroshi had abandoned their plans for a fancy Shishi wedding when they heard the mission description. “About the same.”
“Well. To happier weddings for the next generation.” He sipped from a flask then offered it to her.
“I’ll drink to that.” It was bourbon, better than any she’d tried before.
Setta’s origami bouquet stopped short of the witnesses. A nurse kept it off the deck with a diving grab.
***
Mitchie sent her descent plan to the supporting warships so they could plan suppressing fire around her. Then she sent it again to convince them the first wasn’t a garbled file.
All the medics had passed flight physicals. Joshua Chamberlain burned toward the planet at forty gravs. At that acceleration just lifting one’s hand took work. Which is why the thrust controls were all next to the pilot couch hand rests.
As they approached upper atmosphere Mitchie said, “Brace for skew,” into the PA. When the chronometer hit her calculated mark she fired the pitch thrusters. Still firing her torch the ship flipped 180 degrees. Everyone’s inner ear declared the impossible shift a symptom of poisoning.
She reversed thrusters. A few checks verified she had stopped the ship on the right vector. Now they were slowing at forty gravs. If she’d done her math right they’d stop before reaching bedrock.
Spacehead HQ, Demeter, gravity 7.5 m/s2
The S-4 shop had a fourth-floor office. With the lifts out no one else wanted it. Colonel Marshal liked the fresh air. Every window had been blasted out by the preparatory bombardment so there was plenty of that. The occasional sonic boom was just part of life in a war zone.
This boom came with a wave of heat which drew curses from the walking wounded detailed from the combat units. The blast of air blew displays and datasheets onto the floor. A memory cube shattered.
The colonel answered a snarled “What the fuck was that?” by pointing. A missing wall framed Joshua Chamberlain as her torch faded out. The ship tilted on her turbines and buzzed toward the landing field.
“Dust-off,” said the sergeant major. “Coming to get the wounded. God help them.”
***
Setta opened the cargo hold doors before the ship touched down. They were landing in a former groundster racing park. The view stands were rubble. Two painted arrows marked where they should set down.
The impact jarred her. She straightened up and yelled, “Get your pins!” The medics she’d trained sprang out of their bunks and ran to their assigned spots on the deployable ramp. “Pull pins!” Each one yanked out a metal rod and held it over their head. “Clear!” They scampered. She pushed the RAISE button on the crane remote.
The cable wound through the folded ramp spooled back on to the crane’s winch. The ramp panels levered out, snapping into alignment with each other. When it reached full extension she reversed the winch to lower the rigid ramp to the pavement.
The overcast day turned bright as an autocannon fired on incoming missiles. White starbursts in the sky marked hits.
Setta walked down the ramp, waiting for it to give under her weight. She could see stretcher teams kneeling in the shadow of an intact building. In the middle of the park lines of grav
es marked the turf.
Halfway down she stopped, jumping on the ramp as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. She waved, her hand making semicircles as a “come on” gesture.
The stretcher-bearers came smoothly to their feet. At a steady trot they formed two lines for the ramp.
Setta scampered back up. As the ground-pounders reached the top of the ramp she called, “Tripping hazard! Watch your step!” The lines split around the ramp’s base mechanism.
The medical team took over traffic control. “All the way to the back! All the way to the back!” directed the nurse who’d caught the bouquet.
More autocannon fire sounded, with answering distant explosions.
Returning stretcher bearers fit single-file between the ascending stretchers. Setta shook her head. She figured crowding the ramp like that would send some over the edge. She decided infantrymen must be part goat.
The PA came on. “This is the captain.” She sounded amused. “Air Defense wants everyone to know that the incoming may look close but they’re intercepting everything at least three klicks out. That is all.”
Setta looked at the latest starbursts. If that was three klicks away they were drawing big incoming.
The head doctor declared a casualty dead. His stretcher went on the deployment mechanism to wait for the ramp to clear.
Wounded coming up the ramp now didn’t look as bad as the first wave. The field docs had sent them in triage order. The rows of bunks were over half full.
She realized she wasn’t noticing the autocannon anymore.
“Bosun?”
She turned around to find the head doctor addressing her. “Yes, sir?”
“Tell the captain some casualties can’t handle high acceleration. She’ll have to keep it below twenty gravs.”
“How many, sir?”
“What?”
“How many of them will we lose if we go over twenty,” she explained. “The captain will need to know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the doctor. “She can’t kill our wounded.”
“Sir, choosing between some of us and all of us is what the captain does.” She tried to find a way to make him understand. “It’s how shipmasters do triage.”
The sour look on his face said she’d gotten through. “Seven,” he said in a worried tone, as if he thought that wasn’t enough.
“I’ll tell her. And sir?”
The doctor looked back over his shoulder.
“You would not believe some of the things the Skipper has done to keep her passengers safe. But I’ll tell you once we’re clear.”
That improved his expression almost to a smile.
After passing the word on Setta returned to watching the ramp. These wounded were still badly hurt but the damage had left their uniforms intact enough for her to recognize them. About a third were Diskers, proportional to their contribution to the ground force. The stretcher teams were all four Fuzies or four Diskers. But the wounded they carried were as likely to be one as the other. She found that hopeful.
A nurse called, “Six more!”
Setta looked at the bunks. That would fill them. Great, I get to lie on the deck for lift-off. She took the nurse aside. “Grab pillows for each of us. You don’t want your skull on the deck at high accel.”
After unlatching the deployment mechanism from the deck, she followed the last stretcher bearers down the ramp, unhooking the crane cable and threading it through a different set of holes. Back in the hold she started the crane spooling it up, watching the ramp nervously. If this didn’t work Joshua Chamberlain could have a hole torn in her side.
As the cable tightened the middle of the ramp folded in. It pulled the base plate out of the hold, flinging it beyond where the ramp had touched the pavement. Setta sighed in relief.
She pulled her cutter from its boot sheath. The sawtooth blade made short work of the steel cable. Once the severed end fell out of the hatch she started the doors closing. Normally that felt loud but the autocannon drowned out the rattles and motor hum.
Once Setta latched the doors she called the bridge. “Hold secure for lift.”
The captain answered, “Good. Are the medics secure?”
“No, ma’am. Still fussing with the casualties.”
“Tell them to stop. Incoming’s heating up.”
***
Mitchie said, “Thank you, doctor,” and switched to PA. “All hands, brace for lift.” Next was the frequency for the ground support ships in high orbit. “Badger, badger, badger.” In ninety seconds a wave of suppression bombardment would surround the spacehead. She put the microphone down. “Hiroshi, you have the con.”
“I have the con, aye. Acceleration limit?”
“If we’re taking fire, no limit. Until then keep it to twenty gravs.”
“Aye-aye.” Hiroshi watched the sky. When the streaks of descending missiles appeared he called “Up ship!” on the PA and spun up the turbines.
He started the ascent as an easy fifteen gravs, relying on the spacehead autocannons and the bombardment to protect the ship. Five klicks up he fired the torch and shut down the turbines. The ride grew rough as he constantly tweaked the thrust up and down, being as random as he could to evade Betrayer attacks.
One missile exploded near Joshua Chamberlain as she passed twelve klicks up. The hull groaned as it bent in. The whole ship lurched with the shockwave. Hiroshi cut the torch.
Setta’s voice came from the bridge speakers. “We have air leaks in the hold. Not big. Patchable.”
Guo replied on the same channel, “Increasing oxygen flow.”
The ship kept free-falling, tilting to port. Mitchie said, “Pilot, torch shows all green.”
Hiroshi replied, “Sandbagging.” Five seconds later he relit the torch at twenty gravs.
“Sand-what?” complained Mthembu.
Mitchie chuckled. “He decided to play dead so it’d stop shooting at us. Right, Centurion?”
“Let’s see if it worked, ma’am.”
Whether the AI was fooled or not it didn’t land any more hits before they reached the safety of high orbit. Hiroshi cut the torch again to let Guo and his assistants do damage control.
He stroked the pilot console fondly. “She’s no acrobatic cutter, but I’m learning to do some real flying with this old lady.”
“Good,” said Mitchie. “She deserves some love.”
Patton Station, Demeter System, centrifugal accel. 10 m/s2
A shout woke Guo from a sound sleep. The cabin was lit by the peaceful green lights of the intercom and security panels. He could make out Mitchie standing by the bed, hands raised in a defensive stance.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Her breathing came fast. Her eyes checked the empty corners of the room. Her legs flexed, ready to spring aside.
“Bad dream?”
Mitchie took a deep breath then drew herself up straight. “Yeah.”
“C’mere.” Guo held out his arms. She climbed into bed and let him wrap around her.
When he felt her pulse slow Guo said, “Tell me about it?”
She stayed silent long enough he wondered if she’d gone back to sleep.
“I was stabbing that sentry,” she began. “But it wasn’t the sentry, it was Chetty. He had the same betrayed look the sentry did. Then a missile hit the ship and it broke apart around us. Chetty flew off into the empty. I was falling. You went by screaming. I tried to grab you and missed. Then a guy in a spacesuit tried to strangle me. I started hitting him.” Deep breath. “Then you were asking me silly questions.”
Guo hugged her tightly. “You’re safe now.”
“Yeah, I know. It was just a dream.”
Chapter Fifteen: Orders
Minos Station, Demeter System, centrifugal accel. 10 m/s2
They all stood as Admiral Galen strode into the room. “As you were.” They sat.
Mitchie glanced at the rest of the audience. Pete, Chetty, and some other boffins. Various i
ntel analysts. Some Bonaventure Defense Force infantry officers with hard faces. More Navy types she didn’t know.
Galen put a picture on the screen. The structure had sloped earth sides, weeds sprouting in the dirt. An armored door stood open to let a cargobot enter a dark tunnel.
“Welcome to Operation Jigsaw,” said the Admiral. “These bunkers are all over the damn planet. Their distribution roughly matches the pre-invasion population density. We have no idea what they do. We do know the Betrayer fights like hell to keep us from capturing or destroying one. They’re armored under the dirt so we need big bombs to take one out. It evacuates the contents when we get close.
“So far the speculation runs from command and control nodes to high-intensity data processing centers to data archives.” He waved at the analysts. “Which is a fancy way of saying we don’t have a clue. We need to know: should they be priority targets? Or can we by-pass them and sort it out later?
“That’s your mission. Solve the puzzle.” Galen put a map of the continent Hellas on the screen. “This area hasn’t been contested. The Betrayer has pulled units out to reinforce the front. We’ve identified the most isolated bunker, here by Photakis Village. You’ll drop in, with fire support. Captain Kim’s team will secure the bunker and surrounding area. The research team will go through and collect data. Then lift out before any Betrayer reinforcements can reach the area. Any questions?”
Mitchie said, “How much fire support, sir?”
“The 37th Destroyer Squadron has been hardened against info attacks. They’ll be in-atmosphere for direct support under your control.”
Well, there’s a nice measure for how dangerous they think this is, she thought.
Pete raised his hand. At the admiral’s nod he asked, “How much time will we have on the ground?”
“That’s Commander Long’s call as mission commander.”
Mitchie suspected she might need to have Pete carried back on board by a couple of soldiers.
Demeter, gravity 7.5 m/s2
The high-speed descent didn’t leave much time to appreciate the countryside. Puffs of smoke appeared as the destroyers took out missile launchers, or structures that might have some defensive role. The target bunker was at the edge of the cultivated zone. Untended pines covered the hills to the west.
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