by Ben Weaver
When I looked up, a Ka-bar sprouted from Paul’s back, a Ka-bar gripped by a horrified Colonel Beauregard, who slowly removed his hand, then suddenly wrenched the blade from Paul’s back. The colonel rolled his son over, then took him into his lap. He cradled Paul’s head, swore through his tears, and began rocking. “My only son…my only son…”
Several books dropped to the floor behind me, and there was Halitov, stumbling toward us, one-handing his rifle and rubbing his eyes. I couldn’t read his expression as he gazed at the colonel and Paul, but when he glanced to me, saw my own tears, he just lowered his head and sighed. “I’m sorry.”
We all were, but no one more than Colonel J. D. Beauregard, who, in the days to come, would enlist our new allies to help free his wife.
The attack on the Exxo-Tally ring station lasted no more than a few hours, thanks to the three battalions Colonel Beauregard had hidden aboard. We scored our first joint victory with our new allies, and rumor had it that the war would be over before year’s end. I hoped so. My body couldn’t stand much more abuse.
As the colonel’s forces moped up from the battle, I was taken to a local hospital and received surgery on my stump, after which nurses wheeled me into a Spartan recovery room.
“I’m sick and tired of winding up here,” I told Halitov, scowling at the machines and placards and canisters labeled biohazard.
He leaned back in the chair beside my gurney, folded his hands behind his head. “Hey, man. You’re just living up to our mantra.”
“I didn’t know we had one.”
“Shit, yeah.” He winked. “Live dangerously, eat hospital food. And get this: their spaghetti and meatballs come from a can. From a can!”
I snorted, gingerly touched the nanotech regeneration tube screwed into my shoulder. The docs would try to grow me a new arm, but odds were I’d be fitted with a prosthetic within a year, just like my brother. I wondered if Jing would accept the fact that her fiancé had been maimed. Then again, I was assuming she was still alive and hadn’t been brainwiped. I glanced once more to the tray near my gurney, where I had placed my tablet. I leaned over and drummed a knuckle on the screen.
“Relax. Brooks’ll call,” Halitov said.
“Maybe something went wrong, and she’s thinking of a way to tell me.”
“Maybe you should stop worrying about it until she calls.”
“They either wiped her or killed her, I know it,” I said. “Everybody dies.”
“Except us. We get to watch.”
“You call that a bedside manner?”
“I call it the truth.”
The tablet beeped, and I ripped it from the tray. “Anything?” I asked Ms. Brooks.
“I’m sorry, Scott. I’m afraid the rescue team was shot down before they could land. Our allies tell me that the Eastern Alliance’s flotilla is still there.”
Halitov shouldered his way into camera view. “Ma’am, request permission to go after her.”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but—”
“Don’t make me go AWOL, ma’am. Nothing new there.”
A smile nicked the corners of my mouth as I watched Halitov argue for leading his own rescue mission. Ms. Brooks gazed dubiously at him, unmoved.
“I’ll be going, too,” I told her when Halitov had finished. “I can still fire a weapon.”
“If you think I’ll let you lead a rescue mission now, you’re not only insulting my intelligence, but you’re betraying your lack thereof.”
I winced, sat up. “We can’t leave her there. Please…”
She fidgeted, finally met my gaze. “Let me talk to the colonel about this, and I’ll get back to you.”
The screen went blank.
Halitov grabbed my arm. “We’re not waiting.”
“We’re going AWOL?”
“Does it matter anymore?”
“Rooslin, we can’t.”
“Oh yeah, we can.”
“No, I mean how’re we supposed to get there? Float around in the vacuum, stick out our thumbs, and try hitching a ride?”
“We’ll just hijack an ATC,” he said. “Remember how Eugene did it? All you need is a gun and an attitude. I got both.”
“Oh, that sounds good. We’ll go in with no team, no firepower, and a couple of pilots who don’t want to be there in the first place. Then we somehow blast our way through the flotilla, get down to the moon, break into the facility, and rescue her.”
“Exactly. And in that order.”
“Forget it. We can’t go without help.”
“She’s your wife, man.”
“Fiancée. Now, wait a minute. Yeah, maybe that’s it. If we can get a chip out to him, maybe—”
“A chip out to who?”
I sat up. “Let’s get to a comm hub.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“What am I talking about? You’re the one who gave me the idea.”
“What?”
I sighed through a smile. That was Halitov. Fiercely loyal, incredibly dense.
Nine hours and forty-five minutes later, Mr. Eugene Val d’Or and eight guardsmen from Icillica docked with the station. They had come in a heavily armored ATC and had jammed the cargo bays with particle rifles and explosives confiscated from the garrison at Colyad.
“Didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Val d’Or said, shaking my hand in the docking module and trying to ignore my missing arm. He regarded Halitov. “Didn’t want to see you again.”
Halitov wriggled his brows. “And I thought you’d miss me the most.”
Val d’Or shot Halitov a crooked grin, then waved us through the docking tube and into his ship. “Too bad you couldn’t get the colonel’s blessing,” he called back.
“The colonel claims he’s sending a battle group to take out the flotilla there,” I told him. “But Ms. Brooks says she’s unsure when they’ll arrive, meaning they might never arrive.”
“You want a rescue operation done right? You have to do it yourself.”
“Absolutely. So what lies did you tell to get here?”
“They were complex. They were many. But we three—as much as I hate to admit it in Halitov’s case—we three are brothers. Like the old Earth Marines. Once a guardsman, always a guardsman, even if you now wear a Wardens uniform. One of us calls, we come. Now, then. If you’ll deactivate your tacs, we’ll get under way.”
I knew the moment we did that, the colonel would be alerted, though he could no longer track our location via satnet. I didn’t care anymore. I needed to know one way or the other about Jing, and I wouldn’t wait for the colonel to get around to dispatching that battle group. Halitov was just as eager, and I had forgotten that he had his own agenda for going. But my memory was jarred when we reached Nereid and were hailed by two atmoattack fighters from the security frigate Mao Triggor. Somewhere behind all those cannons and alloy blast plates sat a midshipman at her station, a midshipman who just happened to be Rooslin Halitov’s sister.
“Still hailing us,” the pilot said.
Val d’Or stood behind the man, rubbing his jaw nervously. “We’ll deal with them in a minute. The nuke is spun up. Stand by to take out the frigate.”
“Belay that order,” Halitov cried from his jumpseat. “Eugene, my sister’s aboard that ship!”
“What?” he called back.
“My sister’s aboard that ship! You can’t take her out!”
“There’s a piece of information you could’ve shared BEFORE WE TAWTED OUT!”
“Is there another way through?” I asked Val d’Or.
“No way. They’ve already pinpointed our position. Two more frigates are en route. If we don’t punch a hole and get down there now, this mission is over.”
“Why don’t you try an emergency tawt?” Halitov asked.
“You want to calculate the jump?” Val d’Or countered. “Because our computer sure as hell can’t.”
Halitov threw up his safety bars and stormed toward the cockpit. “Open a channel to th
e frigate.”
Val d’Or placed himself between the cockpit and the hold, raised his index finger at Halitov. “Get back in your seat.”
In one powerful motion, Halitov gripped Val d’Or by the shoulders and lifted him aside. Then he burst into the cockpit and grabbed the pilot’s shoulder. “Just open that fucking channel!”
The pilot, a lean young man, knew better than to argue. “Channel’s open.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Val d’Or screamed.
“Mao Triggor, this is ATC Five-Niner-Seven. Request permission to speak with Midshipman Dobraska Halitov. This is a priority-one request.”
“ATC Five-Niner-Seven, this is Captain Jung Park. We will not honor any requests until you broadcast your IDPO immediately.”
Val d’Or yanked Halitov around, got in his face. “We tell them who we are and where we came from, they’ll fire on us!”
“Send the IDPO,” Halitov ordered the pilot.
“Belay that,” cried Val d’Or, drawing a pistol from his waist and aiming it at Halitov. “You want my help? You do it my way.”
Captain Park’s voice boomed once more. “ATC Five-Niner-Seven. Broadcast your IDPO immediately. Otherwise, I’m going to blow you from my sky.”
“Rooslin,” I said firmly. “Eugene’s right. We ID ourselves, he’ll fire on us. But I have another idea. Let’s go talk to the captain—personally.”
“Oh, no way. No fuckin’ way,” said Val d’Or.
Halitov and I closed our eyes in unison, reached deep down, past the mnemosyne—
And opened our eyes on the Mao Triggor’s bridge. Two security officers were on us, even as I raised my good hand.
“Conditioned soldiers, and Wardens no less,” said Captain Jung Park, a middle-aged Asian man with a crewcut and sinister-looking brows. He glanced to a monitor as a computer scanned our images and locked onto our identities. “Captain Rooslin Halitov and Major Scott St. Andrew, Colonial Wardens.”
“That’s right, Captain,” I said. “Mr. Halitov has a sister aboard your ship.”
“So I’ve just learned. She’s on her way up.” Park moved slowly to Halitov. “Tell me, Captain, did you come here for a family reunion, to surrender, or perhaps, to defect?”
“Rooslin!” shouted Dobraska Halitov, her blonde hair tied in a neat bun, her eyes bearing an uncanny resemblance to Rooslin’s. She broke past the security officers behind us and nearly leapt on her brother. It had been a while since I had seen my friend cry, but he had good reason. On the day Halitov had shipped out to the academy, Dobraska had been there to see him off, and that was the last time they had seen each other before she had been conscripted into the Eastern Alliance Navy. As she pulled back, her finger went to the gray at his temples. “What happened?”
“We can’t talk about it now.”
“How did you find me?”
“Doesn’t matter. I should’ve found you a long time ago.”
“But now you’re POWs. You shouldn’t have come.”
Halitov glanced to me.
I cleared my throat, not having a plan, only a premonition that if I could stall the captain long enough, an answer would come. “Sir, my friend and I are en route to the research facility on Nereid. My fiancée, Katya Jing, is a POW there. We’re going in with a small commando team to rescue her.”
Halitov’s jaw nearly slipped from his face. “Scott?”
Park brought those sinister brows together, then abruptly smiled. “You expect me to believe that, Major?”
“Yes, sir. And we could use your help. All you need to do is let us pass through, and no shots will be fired.”
“This is ridiculous, Major. I believe you’ve lost more than just your arm.”
“Is my request any more ridiculous than this entire war? How many friends have you seen die for nothing?”
“They died defending the Alliances. They died honorably. But Major, we’re not here to debate the validity of this war. You’ve willed yourselves into enemy territory, and unless you plan on using your conditioning to leave, you’ll be placed under arrest, thrown in the brig, and probably be shipped down to the moon for study.”
“Sir, the ATC has just tawted out,” reported one of Park’s tactical officers.
“So much for being brothers,” Halitov muttered.
“Well now, it seems you’ve nowhere to go,” said Parks. “Unless you can will yourselves down to Nereid. But from what I understand, bridging a distance like that is impossible.”
“Scott,” Halitov sang in a warning tone. “What the hell are we doing?”
“We’re surrendering.”
Parks gestured for his security officers to lead us out, and, surprisingly, he allowed Halitov’s sister to accompany us.
Inside the lift, Halitov asked, “Did you do this for me? Because next time would you mind asking first?”
I glanced at him, then looked down, widening my gaze on my tac. He understood and discreetly reactivated his.
16
I sat in my cell, digging fingers between the regeneration tube and my arm, eyes tearing as I struggled for an itch I would never reach and fought against the phantom knives and ghostly flames. The docs had discussed some biofeedback treatment that would ease the phantom limb pain. I didn’t know what that was, but at that moment I would have killed for it.
Halitov had been placed in the cell across from mine, and he’d been sitting there for hours, catching up with his sister. Again, I was surprised that she had been allowed to spend so much time with him. Despite those evil-looking brows, Captain Jung Park had a good heart. Siblings, once torn apart by the war, had finally been reunited, and Park considered that more important than blindly following protocols regarding prisoners of war. The man had earned my respect.
A battle stations alert sounded over the shipwide intercom, and Dobraska said a quick good-bye as a security officer opened a breach in the cell’s force beams.
“What do you think?” Halitov asked.
“Well, if that’s a Colonial battle group out there, then they should pick up our tac signals—hopefully before they engage this ship.”
“You think we’ll be that lucky? Linda Haspel is still out there. She’s probably sticking pins in her little Rooslin Halitov doll right now.”
We sat there for maybe another hour, ears pricked on the bulkheads as we anticipated signs of incoming fire. I didn’t know about Halitov, but my pulse raced. Every minute of not knowing drained the life from me as efficiently as my failed conditioning.
Finally, I shot to my feet as the brig’s hatch opened, and Captain Jung Park strode quickly inside. Had he come to taunt us? Interrogate us? “Major, Captain, you’ll be leaving now.”
“Where are we going?” asked Halitov.
“You’ll be heading down to the moon,” he answered evenly.
My heart dropped. The colonel’s battle group had not arrived, and we were being shipped down to the research facility so that Alliance military scientists could do everything short of lobotomizing us.
“Captain,” I began somberly. “Thank you for letting my friend talk to his sister.”
“I have a family myself, Major. And now I hope your people are as understanding.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but our situation became clear as we stepped onto a catwalk overlooking the main docking bay, where two ATCs bearing Colonial Warden insignia had docked. A full platoon of troops had fanned out, their rifles trained on Park’s security detail.
“Sir?” I asked the captain.
“One of your battle groups is out there, Major. I’m sure that comes as no surprise. They’ve captured our entire flotilla and ordered your release, which is why I said you’ll be heading down to the moon—to rescue your fiancée.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, then mounted the staircase.
“Scott, I need to talk to the admiral here,” said Halitov. “There has to be something we can do about my sister. I won’t let her be interned.”
“I doubt
we’ll be in the admiral’s or the colonel’s good graces after this, but you can try.”
“Sir,” called the platoon commander, a young man of no more than twenty who marched toward us, his expression so intense that it bordered on comical. “First Lieutenant Tim Roth, sir! We’re here to escort you back to the Thomas Regal, sir!”
“Negative, Lieutenant. We’re heading down to the moon.”
“Sir, those are not my orders, sir.”
“No, Lieutenant. They’re mine.”
I left the confused boy in my wake and climbed aboard the ATC, accepting a tablet from the co-pilot. I immediately called Admiral Anne Forrick, the battle group’s commander, who spent the better part of five minutes booming at Halitov and I for recklessly endangering our lives. When I told her that we hadn’t finished “recklessly endangering our lives” and were requesting permission to head down to the moon, she flatly refused. But a bit more coaxing and the promise that we’d allow her troops to secure the facility before we entered finally made her give in.
A mere two hours later, Halitov and I were running frantically down a hallway within the facility’s rotating ring that, like the Exxo-Tally station, produced near Earth-normal gravity. We found the personnel quarters, searched another hall for the hatch number given to us by a first sergeant, and burst into the room to find Jing lying on a gelrack, that same first sergeant standing nearby, skinned up and giving orders to his squad. “Sirs!” he said, snapping to attention.
I ignored him and dropped to my knees beside Jing’s bed. I didn’t know her status, because I had deliberately not asked when the sergeant had contacted me. I could not bear to have some noncom tell me over the tactical frequency that my fiancée had been brainwiped or was dead. I needed to learn for myself. Jing glanced vaguely at me, then at Halitov.
“Katya, it’s me, Scott. Katya?”
She craned her head, squinted hard in thought, then suddenly widened her eyes. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”
“Katya?”
“The drugs, the needles, the tests, day in and day out. All I can say is, you better have brought that wedding ring.”