by Rick Partlow
Jason switched on the flashlight, panning its beam across the plateau, looking for Valerie, but saw nothing but a few scrub bushes growing out of the weathered rock. He scanned back and forth again, starting to get concerned. She wouldn’t have gone off the cliff, would she?
“Are you looking for me?” He heard her voice from behind him and turned to see her leaning, arms crossed, against the rock wall behind him, just to the right of the access hatch.
“Guess so,” he admitted, extinguishing the light and stepping over to her. “Is everything okay, Valerie?”
“That’s a funny question for you to ask, Jason,” she said, cocking her head toward him. “Of all people.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, leaning back against the rock face beside her. “Look, I’m sorry if…”
“Sorry about what?” she interrupted. “Sorry you found Shannon alive again? I doubt that.”
“No, I’m not sorry I found her alive,” he told her without hesitation. “And I’m not sorry I still have feelings for her.”
“And what about me?” she asked him softly. “Don’t you have any feelings for me?”
Jason grimaced, feeling like a first-class bastard.
“I do care about you,” he sighed. “I’m not saying I don’t.”
“But you don’t love me,” she finished for him, her voice resigned, her face lost in the shadows.
“You told me you weren’t sure if you’d ever been in love,” Jason reminded her. “Or if you even knew what it was. Well, I’m not sure I know any better than you. I can’t tell you why things work between some people and not between others. I just know that I have something special with Shannon, something I’m not ready to give up. You and I…” he shook his head. “We couldn’t have any kind of future. You have your career waiting for you back on Earth, and Glen.”
“Glen.” Valerie laughed sharply, humorlessly. “Oh, yes, I’ve got Glen, lucky me.”
“He cares about you, Val,” Jason told her.
“He doesn’t care about anybody but himself,” she muttered bitterly.
“He came to me,” Jason told her. “He was worried about you—he wanted me to talk to you, make sure you were okay, since you wouldn’t talk to him.”
“Glen came to you?” Her head came up in surprise.
“It couldn’t be too easy for him.”
“No,” she agreed, “especially with you.”
“Give him a chance,” Jason urged her. “God knows, none of us is perfect. And he loves you.” Hesitantly, he put a hand on her shoulder, saw her look up at his touch. “Look, Val, what you and I had was special. We needed each other. We couldn’t have survived without one another. I’ll never forget it, and I’ll never forget you. But things are different now. We both have other people who are counting on us to be there for them.” He let his hand slide off her arm, shaking his head. “It just wouldn’t be right.”
“What if,” she replied softly, “I don’t care what’s right? What if I don’t care what anyone else thinks or needs? What if all I want is to tell everyone else to go to hell and just be with you?”
“I’m sorry, Val.” Jason sagged back against the rockface, feeling helpless and very sad. “I just can’t do that.”
“I guess I’m sorry, too.” She pushed away from the wall and stepped over to the entrance hatch, hugging her arms to herself. She took one final glance back at him, almost as if she held out one last hope that he might ask her not to go, and then she ducked back inside and was gone.
Jason stared up at the starscape, rhythmically smacking the flashlight against his palm. The mountain air was cool and clean, and the stars were painfully beautiful. He felt like staying out here for a while, clearing his mind of all the confusion and pain—but back inside, Shannon was in bed, waiting for him, and he didn’t want to let her down. Not again. He headed back inside, shutting the door behind him.
* * *
Tom Crossman paced into the shelter’s control room, hands stuffed in his pockets, boredom written in his expression. Nearly three months of unchecked growth had turned his hair from a barely-regulation cut to its more natural mass of wavy brown, and his mustache was a bushy handlebar beginning to droop over his jawline. If someone had told him when he enlisted that someday the military would allow him to wear his hair however he wanted… But right now, he would have willingly endured a high-and-tight just to get back to Earth—or anywhere.
Falling onto the couch, he saw Vinnie sitting in front of the commo panel, headphones hanging half off, chin resting on his hands. Somehow, he’d managed to retain his buzzcut—God knew how. Probably scraped it off with a Goddamned combat knife, the psycho motherfucker. Jock was at the small table, nose buried in an old-style hardcopy book.
“Whatcha reading, Jock?” he asked, not really caring but feeling he’d go nuts if he didn’t talk to someone soon.
“Something I found in a closet,” he said, sparing Crossman a glance. “S’about some bloke who deserts the army for a sheilla. It’s called, ah…” He turned the book around and checked the title. “A Farewell to Arms.”
“Any good?”
“Better than whacking my wanker, I guess,” he muttered, settling back into his chair and his book.
Tom sighed, realizing Jock was a lost cause. Oh, well, maybe he could get a rise out of Mahoney.
“How long you going to sit there and eat static, Vinnie?” Tom asked him. “I mean, you been wearing those things for a month and you ain’t heard shit yet.”
“I don’t want to spend one more minute in this Goddamned hole than I have to,” Vinnie clipped off tersely, eyes still glued to the wall. “Got a problem with that?”
“Gosh,” Tom said, shaking his head. “You guys are just a laugh a minute, aren’t you?”
“Why aren’t you with your sweet little senorita?” Jock looked back up from his novel. “She finally dump you?”
“Nah,” Crossman said. “Rosie’s okay. But she’s spending a lot of time with that Mendoza lady and her kids—guess ’cause they can talk Spanish to each other. I hung out with them for a while, but I can’t follow it when they start jabbering a hundred klicks an hour, and it gets kind of boring after a while.”
“Hell,” Jock grumbled, “I’ll talk Spanish to her—I’ll speak fucking Greek if she wants. I haven’t touched a sheilla since we left Earth.”
“It’s good for you, Jock,” Vinnie grunted. “Builds character.”
“Thanks loads, mate,” Gregory shot back, scowling at him, “but I’ve got plenty of character already.”
“Y’know,” Crossman said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw, “this reminds me of when my parents stuck me in military school.”
“You went to military school?” Vinnie’s eyebrows shot up.
“Oh, yeah, man, two whole miserable years,” Crossman said. “I was what you might call a problem child. Anyway, this place was co-ed, of course, but it was about two hundred klicks into the middle of nowhere, right at the edge of the Rockies Preserve, and there was only two girls in the place—one of them was a lesbian and the other was a Muslim Fundamentalist.”
“Ouch.” Jock winced sympathetically. “So you had a pretty lonely two years, huh?”
“No way, bud.” Tom laughed. “I studied the Koran for a whole semester and had that Muslim babe believing I was Mohammed’s long-lost cousin.”
“Damn, I am impressed.” Jock tipped an imaginary hat to him. “Anyone who could…”
“Shut up!” Vinnie snapped suddenly.
Tom and Jock turned, frowning in confusion, and saw Vinnie’s hands pulling the radio headphones over his ears, eyes wide.
“What is it?” Tom sat up straight on the couch.
“Shut the hell up!” he reiterated. “Jock, go get the LT—now!”
Gregory didn’t question his partner—he knew that tone of voice. Before Tom could ask him what was going on, the Australian was off his seat and out of the room.
Jason shifted in his position, trying to get more c
omfortable against the rough surface of the plateau as he panned his binoculars over the narrow draw below them.
“Do you see them?” he asked Shannon, shaking his head slightly.
“Further north,” she indicated, training her own glasses toward the mouth of the draw, shielding them against the midday sun with her other hand.
Jason followed her direction and finally caught a hint of movement through the glasses. He focused in on it and saw one of Lambert’s Marines low-crawling from cover to cover, the rifle barrel of the man overwatching his move barely visible from behind a thick stand of brush. Somewhere ahead of them, at the other end of the draw, waited Captain Trang and his two men, serving as the opposing force. Jason and his team had held that honor for over a month, but the two units had become too used to one another and Lambert had asked Trang for help.
Another pair of Marines advanced up the draw, their camo fatigues blending in with the grey and brown rock around them. Watching them, Jason had a vivid flashback to his days as an enlisted man, running exercises like this in the North Dakota Badlands at the Marine Training Grounds with blank ammo and laser indicators. Everything was so much simpler when all you had to worry about was covering your buddy’s maneuver and keeping your ass out of the line of fire.
“Lieutenant McKay!” He turned at the shout from behind him and saw Jock Gregory sprinting from the shelter’s side entrance, waving his hands like a maniac, eyes wild. “Lieutenant McKay, come quick!”
McKay stood, letting his binoculars hang freely from the strap around his neck. Beside him, Shannon rolled into a sitting position, looking up with curiosity at Jock as he ran up to them.
“What is it, Jock?” McKay asked the Tech-Sergeant as the man skidded to a halt, panting with exertion.
“Sir,” Gregory gasped, “Vinnie… the radio…”
“Shit,” Jason breathed. Before Jock could elaborate further, Jason was sprinting for the shelter, Shannon at his heels.
“Tell Lambert,” she shouted over her shoulder at Jock just before she ducked through the entrance.
Jason and Shannon raced through the garage and into the shelter control room, where a small crowd had already begun to gather around Vinnie at the communications board. McKay brushed past Governor Sigurdson and Carmella Mendoza and unceremoniously yanked the earphones off Vinnie’s head. Hurriedly pulling the headset into place, he caught an explosion of static and a faint voice.
“…repeat, this is Captain Joyce Minishimi of the RSS Bradley,” the earphones hissed. “Do you read me?”
Jason twisted the headset’s microphone around and hit the transmit key.
“Bradley,” he shouted into the mike, “this is Lieutenant Jason McKay, Fleet Intelligence, do you copy?”
There was a heart-stopping pause, and McKay had a nightmare vision of the ship not picking up his signal, abandoning the planet and heading back to Earth.
“I read you, McKay,” Captain Minishimi’s voice finally came back, a note of caution evident in her tone. “Tell me, is Gunnery Sergeant Constantine with you?”
“Afraid not.” Jason had to admire her precautions. “But we do have a Gunny Lambert somewhere around here. Will he do?”
“That’s a roger, McKay.” Relief was evident in her reply. “It’s good to hear from you. Is Ms. O’Keefe all right?”
“She’s just fine, Captain,” he assured her, eyes darting up at Val and Glen, part of the crowd gathered around the radio. “We’ve even got the Governor with us here—but we could sure use a ride if you’re headed our way.”
“Oh, I think we can manage something, McKay. We’ll have a shuttle down to you as soon as we reach orbit.”
“Captain, how did you get here so quickly?” Jason asked. “I didn’t think anybody’d realize what had happened for months. Did the MacArthur get away and send for help?”
“Negative, Lieutenant.” Minishimi’s voice was grim. “The Mac was destroyed. But a cargo ship was refueling at the solar antimatter factory when she was attacked, and they managed to get away before anyone detected them. You folks just got lucky.”
“Damn,” Jason mumbled to himself, realizing just how close they’d been to being stuck on Aphrodite for at least another year, until the arrival of the next scheduled patrol.
“Anything else you folks need?” the captain asked him.
“Well,” he said, “we’ve been out of the loop for a while, ma’am. You wouldn’t happen to know who won the Superbowl, would you?”
Minishimi laughed. “Let me put it this way, Lieutenant,” she told him, “I hope you didn’t have any money on the Cowboys or you’re shit out of luck.”
Chapter Thirteen
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”
—Robert Frost
Jason swallowed hard and led Shannon into Colonel Mellanby’s office, the door hissing ominously shut behind them. Of all the things he’d looked forward to in the jubilation and relief of returning to Earth, this was not one of them. He’d had waking nightmares of The Snake pinning him to the wall like a bug in a child’s collection, ticking off a list of Jason’s various indiscretions and bad decisions like an archangel at the Last Judgement, and immediately putting Shannon in charge of the team.
And maybe she should be in charge, he’d reflected. After all, she’d led them in the successful attack on the spaceport while he’d been off playing cave-man. So he stepped into the office fully prepared to face the wrath of the Snake and give up his command.
But the smile that played over Kenneth Mellanby’s face as they stepped inside was decidedly un-Snake-like. It seemed almost friendly. For a moment, Jason thought they’d mistakenly stepped into the wrong office, but then the expression was gone as if it had never been, and the Snake-mask fell back into place.
“Lieutenants McKay and Stark report, sir,” Jason announced, he and Shannon stiffening into a salute.
“At ease,” Mellanby snapped, waving off the salute. “Have a seat, both of you.”
The Colonel watched them feel their way into their chairs, then paced around his desk, one hand behind his back, the other filled with a sheaf of hardcopy. “I’ve read the reports of your debriefing,” he told them, slapping the file against his thigh. “I’ve heard the facts, I’ve seen the pictures.” He fixed them with a stare. “Now I want your impressions.”
Jason saw the man’s eyes on him and squirmed uncomfortably. He shrugged.
“Lieutenant Stark had more contact with the enemy than I did. But from what I could see, I would say that the things that attacked us—the troopers themselves—are more like some kind of robot or mind-controlled slave than truly sentient intelligences. Once the Invaders pulled out, the troops they left behind didn’t even try to find food or water. They just shot at anything in sight until their ammo ran out, then wandered around till they died.”
“But when they were being controlled,” Shannon put in, “they were highly organized. They were capable of operating those ‘Hopper’ things, which must be pretty complex.”
“I’ve heard all this in the transcripts.” Mellanby shook his head impatiently. “I don’t want to hear the how—I want the why.”
“These things are obviously considered expendable,” Jason reasoned. “That means they must have plenty of them—either they breed them somewhere or they have some way of manufacturing them quickly.”
“Their technology doesn’t appear to be that advanced,” Shannon said. “Maybe they have to use the troops that way because their ships aren’t powerful enough to take on ours head-on.”
“Or they’re short on ships and can’t risk having one damaged in battle,” Jason suggested. “Either way, having these… drones or whatever sneak in and do their dirty work must be the easiest way for them to do things.”
“So what’s their motivation?” Mellanby prompted, sitting on the edge of his desk. “Why hit Aphrodite?”
“They were looting the place,” Jason offered. “Maybe they’re
short on processed goods, like computers and power production equipment.”
“The real question,” Shannon said, “is where they’ll hit next.”
“That’s what I want you to find out,” Mellanby told them. “The Patton is being readied for departure to Aphrodite in a week. I want your team on it. You’ll have a Marine Reaction Force at your disposal—the same one that was with you during the occupation, with reinforcements of course. There will also be a scientific team on board with a full complement of forensic researchers, also at your disposal.”
“Great,” McKay said with a chuckle. “Back to beautiful scenic Aphrodite.”
“I know it’s not much of a break,” Mellanby agreed. “But we don’t know how long we have or if they’ll strike again at another colony. I suggest you make the most of your week. Go ahead and take leave for a couple days—after you take Senator O’Keefe up on his invitation.”
“What invitation?” Jason asked, a bad feeling deep in his gut.
“The Senator has invited your team to a dinner in your honor at 1900 hours Zulu time tonight at his house—all the biggest VIP’s and the press will attend.” Colonel Mellanby chuckled. “I wouldn’t force such a fate on the enlisted, but as officers it is your duty to take advantage of this golden opportunity to afford the military a bit of positive publicity.”
“Where do I go to desert?” Jason rubbed a hand tiredly over his face.
“Cheer up,” Shannon said, nudging him. “With our recent luck, maybe his house will burn down.”
“Oh, there’s one other thing.” Mellanby raised a finger as he circled back behind his desk. Reaching into a drawer, he pulled out a pair of small, sealed plastic bags and tossed them up and down in his hand. “Your team has been given official recognition by the Department of Defense. Once you return from Aphrodite, you’ll be recruiting new members of the First Special Operations Detachment.” He tossed one of the plastic bags at McKay. “Captain Jason McKay commanding.”