The sun disappeared below the horizon amidst a strand of purple clouds hanging low over the water. Pluto-Charon would be a challenge, Crawley assured her, but she doubted that the scenery would be as nice that far from the sun.
“Haven’t seen you around here.” A dark-haired pilot sat next to her and gestured for the bartender to bring them both another round. He was drinking a beer the color of piss. “Mind if I sit down?”
Ayumi scanned his face and covered her recognition with a bright smile as her drink was delivered. “No, go right ahead.”
He slid onto the stool and turned to show off the pilot wings on his chest. “You’re not stationed here.” He said it with a wide smile that made her want to knock the cocky shit off his face.
“No, I’m in transit.”
Peck grinned and leaned closer. “Where are you headed?” He sipped his shitty beer.
Ayumi wanted to laugh as Amy’s lexicon filled her mind more with every moment. It was absurdly entertaining and so apropos it made her smile in return. “Sorry. You don’t have the need to know.”
“Oh, come on. I’m a lieutenant in the Fleet. I put you as an ensign, maybe a petty officer, so you can totally trust me. When do you leave? Tomorrow?”
Ayumi gaped at him for a moment. The urge to punch him in the face almost made her laugh. “Yes. You?”
“Staying here. Came out of training on Mars, and they thought I did such a great job that I came back to instruct. Not bad, huh?”
“Not at all.” Ayumi smiled. “Thank you for the drink. I didn’t catch your name.”
“John Peck.” He grinned. “Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
Ayumi laughed, albeit in a forced way. “I have, actually. My friend Christina Bussot spoke about you often.”
Peck blinked. The lie was perfect. Given what Crawley had told her about Bussot’s relentless pursuit of Kieran, the desired effect on Peck was even better. He inched slightly away from Ayumi, and it almost made her smile.
“You know Commander Bussot?”
“We met at Armstrong Station, Venus,” Ayumi said as she effortlessly pulled the former commander’s file. “You heard she was chaptered?”
“I did. She shouldn’t have lied about training statistics.” Peck looked away and dove into his beer again.
Ayumi dropped her left hand to his thigh. “Nor should she have messed around with junior officers. Which is something I will never do. Get lost, Peck.”
Peck flinched backward and stood. All vestiges of color left his face in a split second. The cocky fighter jock was gone and replaced by the scolded schoolboy. It was almost good enough. “Enjoy your drink.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Peck ordered three more bottles of beer and walked to the outdoor bar, shoulders a little slumped. There might have even been a shred of regret in his mannerisms, but she did not care.
Ayumi finished the bourbon and picked up the one Peck had purchased. She nodded to the bartender to let him know that she was walking outside. At the edge of the wooden deck, she kicked off her shoes and stepped onto the cool sand. With light steps, she moved to the water line and felt the tepid water lapping at her ankles with something like ecstasy. The waves came in with small explosions of bioluminescence that made her smile.
A sip of bourbon brought a moment of clarity as the first stars peeked out of the curtain of night. In everything that had happened, all that Crawley had told her, the common thread was closure.
Once she was connected to the surf rescue camera system, finding Peck was easy. He’d moved south to the small pier jutting out into the bay. She walked a hundred yards to the north before disconnecting the camera system entirely. Confident it was out and that no one would see her in the gathering dark, she turned south.
<
We both know what I’m doing. Ensure we’re not seen.
<
The fading light blacked out the skyline of Perth as she walked. Lights flickered and broke the darkness far away, but the beach was dark and calm as she closed the distance. He was easy to spot, even in the available light, as he threw shells into the sea from the end of the short pier. She moved silently. The worn wooden planks were cool and wet, but they did not give as she crept toward the end. With the low light, he didn’t see her until she was nearly at his side.
“Hey.” He grinned at her. Even in the darkness, his teeth seemed inordinately bright. “Didn’t think you’d come after me.”
Ayumi grinned. “Why not?”
“You know.” Peck grinned and shrugged like a teenage boy. Of course, fighter pilots tended to act that way a lot. “Didn’t think you were interested.” Peck stepped closer. His hands came up near her waist but made no contact. She could smell the shitty beer on his breath. Four empty beer bottles stood wedged between the boards at his feet. “And now you’re here.”
Ayumi stepped back a half step and tossed back the bourbon, wincing at the burn in her throat. With a long, fluid movement, she tossed the empty glass into the surf. Peck watched it flying long enough that she grabbed one of his empty beer bottles and held it hidden behind her right leg. She studied him. His early cockiness combined with heavy-lidded drunkenness. There was no doubt he’d be sucking down pure oxygen in the life-support shop before flight operations in the morning. It made her sick, which helped the anger burn.
“Now I’m here.”
Peck grinned. “So where are we at? With this?”
“What happened on Mars?”
He staggered back. “What?”
“Your accident. You took out another aircraft, I heard.”
“Yeah.” He glanced away. “Enemy fire, you know? Evasive action.”
Ayumi shook her head and allowed a sad smile to cross her face. “Into the tail of your leader, instead of pulling off the power and following him out? The kind of move an idiot would make.”
Peck’s silly grin evaporated. “That’s not the way—”
“Was that part of your orders from the Terran Council?”
Peck flared. “You don’t have the need—” He reached for the small of his back. The probability of a weapon was 98 percent.
Her hand slammed the empty bottle into the side of Peck’s head with a wet thud that was slightly louder than the sound of the bottle breaking and scattering itself across the damp pier. As he staggered, she slapped a long knife out of his hands and into the surf. She knew she’d have to kill him. Somehow, it felt right. He came up with a swing that had no prayer of catching Ayumi, much less anyone sober enough to fight a fair fight.
Ayumi ducked away from the punch and swept Peck’s legs out from under him. He hit the pier like a sack of shit, and his breath exploded out in a sudden whoosh that she felt on her face as she straddled his chest. Left hand on the collar of his flight suit, she slung his head with all her might toward a concrete pylon beside him. His head made a wet, thick sound as it bounced off the pylon. Peck was unconscious when she rolled him into the rising tide. As the breakers bubbled over his body, Ayumi stood and waited for him to sputter to life in the shallow water, but he remained facedown and still.
Watching him, she recognized the feeling in her stomach as pity. The young man had no doubt been a promising pilot, but his ego and drive for recognition outside the chain of command had clouded his future. Ramming Kieran’s aircraft showed how far Peck would go to get what he wanted. Anyone who would kill for power and status was not someone the Fleet or the TDF could use in their formations.
Tell Crawley it’s done.
<
The last sunlight faded, and the beach was dark and still. “That was for Kieran,” she said to the night and walked back to the officers’ club in the rising surf. There was no internal argument with Amy. They’d realized certain things would be necessary.
By the time Fleet authorities found Peck’s body, Ayumi would be gone. Investigators would close the case before lunch, calling it an unfortunate accident. Crawley assured her of that. The sleeper program needed a clean slate, and Peck had been a loose end.
That was good enough for Ayumi.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Falling through the atmosphere from forty kilometers up wasn’t as great as I thought it would be. Even hitting the upper part of the atmosphere took twenty minutes, and coming in over the Indian Ocean, there really wasn’t much to see. Add that it was almost two in the morning in Esperance, and the darkness was absolute save for the thin Western Australia coastline in the distance. The outer tube slid through the atmosphere, but as I descended, turbulence rose up to meet me. I tried to fix the external camera on one point to mitigate getting airsick from the shaking. Lily rebooted and came back online as promised, so I could at least talk to someone.
<
I laughed and told her what I knew. When I finished, I said, “Engage all of our predetermined contact points, notify Berkeley and General Crawley that I’m on my way home, and get me all of the information you can from the TDF about my ‘accident.’”
Lily replied after a moment. <
Somehow, I thought I could manage. She asked me a lot of questions regarding the accident and my “captivity” with the Styrahi at the end of the exercise.
<
“Does that happen often?”
<>
Wonderful. When flying, or even a lifetime before in my tank, I had the opportunity to tighten my straps or prepare myself for the coming carnage, whatever it might have been. Inside the ballistic capsule, I sat strapped from head to toe and couldn’t even scratch my nose.
Air brakes deployed on the shell of the capsule, roughing the ride significantly. For the first time, I heard the supersonic air passing across the capsule’s shell. Vibrations grew in intensity as the air passed over roughened airbrakes along the shell’s outer surface.
<
Someone will be there, Lily. Even out of contact for two weeks, I knew that Crawley would know I was back and would take care of getting me home. I didn’t believe he was dead for a second. They’d gone after him, but I knew he was too good to get caught. For a moment, I hoped Berkeley would be waiting for me. I knew better than to think ahead, especially when I’d be separating from the capsule at several hundred kilometers per hour and descending by parachute. Too many things could happen. I had one last glance at the Earth’s surface. There were storms in the Indian Ocean. I was in for a rough landing.
<
Learning to handle possible malfunctions should have been several days’ worth of training when I went to jump school. Instead, I remembered it being maybe an afternoon when we watched selected trainees perform those corrective procedures, usually to jeers and laughs when they learned that pulling the reserve parachute was a little more difficult than it sounded. Fortunately, none of us had reason to do so when the real jumps came.
At fifteen seconds to go, Lily disconnected my feed from the capsule. Instead of an audible countdown, she ticked off the seconds in the upper right corner of my neural connection. At zero, I held my breath, and all hell broke loose. The outer shell exploded into three pieces around me. The straps securing me to the pieces released at the same time, but given the way aerodynamics tended to work, I was asshole over elbows in a millisecond and unconscious before I could count to two.
<
I came awake with the familiar feeling of my weight being supported by parachute risers. My head hurt, and my vision swam for a moment. My mouth was dry, but I was able to croak, “Well, that was fun.”
<
“I still can’t talk to anybody?”
<
Two minutes later, I saw an infrared searchlight from some kind of boat on the rough seas below. The suit’s visor resolution was much better than my neurals. Based on where I was, there was no way I was going to land on the boat. I’d land within a few hundred meters, maybe, but that would be close enough. “That’s why they gave me an exposure suit, huh?”
<
Wonderful.
<
I hit the water midoscillation as the wind flung me from side to side like a rag doll. The cold water slapped me in the face before I managed to ensure the hood was closed tight. A thin rivulet of ice ran down my neck and across my chest before it warmed up enough so that I could breathe again.
Between swells that were at least two meters high, if not more, I could see the light growing closer. There was some buoyancy to the suit, but I could feel the cold seeping through it and treaded water to keep warm. “Activate my beacons, Lily.”
<
I could barely make out the ship until it was almost on top of me. When the hull slid up and stopped next to me, I was smiling. Lights came on across the rusted old trimaran, and even though they wore old rain slickers, I recognized Downy and Turk before they hauled me aboard.
“Look what we found!” Downy shouted in my ear as we embraced quickly. He jumped across the netting to the central cabin and fired up the engines. As the boat came about, Turk gestured me down into the port cabin.
“Get changed, mate.” He pointed to a full set of clothes from my house, lying on the table. “We’ll hit the stables in about thirty minutes. Sit tight, and hang on!”
“Where’s Berkeley?” I asked over the roaring of the engines, but Turk was already moving up and out of the cabin. I pulled off the exposure suit with major effort—getting into the rubberized garment had been a hell of a lot easier. By the time I was out of the suit and into my own comfortable jeans, old sweater, and clunky flight boots, I could see the stabilizer field in the distance.
About every kilometer, a large pylon came up from the ocean floor and helped to act as a surf break for the area closer to shore. Between some of the wide, fat obelisks at the water line was a type of generator that took the tremendous energy from the lashing sea and converted it to power. Every single field line could be raised to encircle all of Australia or just a few at a time for everyday conditions. In the raging storm, almost every field was going, and Downy slotted us between the only two pylons with bright green lights flashing at the top.
The combined effect of the pylons and their fields made the coastal waters much safer for ships traversing the great distances of the ocean. Nearing shore was far more dangerous than plowing through giant, rogue waves. Through the pylon gate, I saw a man out on one of the southern pylon’s decks. He waved as we went through and activated the containment field behind us. The hairs on my arms stood on end as the air hummed to life. The amount of power it generated was pretty damned impressive. I wished Berkeley were there to explain it to me. I’d taken to giving her old American quarters for every “twenty-five-cent lecture” she g
ave. At least, I thought it was funny. I couldn’t wait to wrap my arms around her.
Soon enough.
Fifteen minutes later, we were still a good five kilometers off the coast, and the swells were down to a half a meter, if anything. I came up out of the cabin to find Downy and Turk on the center hull. I crawled across the netting, one hand on the guideline, and dropped in with them.
Downy frowned with one side of his mouth. “Allan says you’re dead again, mate. Gonna make this a habit?”
I laughed. The cold, moist air bit into my skin. “Not planning to, no.”
Turk shook his head. “We’re gonna drop you there first.”
It made sense to me. Berkeley would meet me there, and I could get some good food and a beer before we went to bed. I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks, and the official word was that she was missing. I knew she’d be there. Crawley would see to it. Waking up in my own bed with Berkeley’s warm legs around me would be heaven.
“How’s the surf lately?”
“Fuckin’ winter.” Downy grinned. “Turk, get the sled ready. Drop him on the beach, and head to West Dock. Leave it there, and I’ll get the boat to the marina.” His eyes came up to meet mine. “Secrets and shit, mate. I’ve had about enough of both. Frankly, I can’t see how you do it anymore. Never know what you’re walkin’ into and shit.” He shook his head and walked away, down into the main cabin.
Rain fell in large splattering drops. Turk threw on a rain slicker and kept his back to me. For the first time since I’d walked into Allan’s more than eighteen months before, I suspected that Downy, Turk, and some of the others might want me out of their lives. They loved me, and I was a part of the family, but I needed to either go away or drop the whole Fleet-TDF thing entirely. Man, it was tempting to walk away. Berkeley and I hadn’t mentioned it, but I believed we were both thinking about a family. It would be so easy to stay in Esperance for the rest of my life. With a deep breath, I crawled back to the hull cabin where I’d left the Styrahi exposure suit. In the rusted sink was a strap of metal. I tied the suit around it and cast the bundle into the water to be sure it wasn’t discovered. The green-and-black garment disappeared almost immediately beneath the waves. Talk about a hint.
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