Sixteenth Watch

by Myke Cole

  “I couldn’t let them shoot up that boat, Naeemah. Not if I could have stopped it.”

  Pervez blinked at her. “What were you planning on doing when you got to them? Play patty-cake?”

  “I figured maybe they needed a hug.” Oliver felt light. The sense of slowed-time didn’t abate, but she could see everything – the swirling dust, the outlines of the ships above her, the spray of stars overheard, in crystal clarity. She could feel her heart and her lungs and the pumping of her blood, slowing now as she processed that the immediate danger had passed. Lunar gravity always made her feel somewhat like floating, but this was different, as if a single step would send her rising up to the frigates station keeping above her.

  “Come on,” she said, her own voice bright and resonant in her ears. “Let’s go see how they’re doing up there.”

  Pervez bounded up after her as she ascended the hab’s side, straddling the dented and pockmarked coolant pipe, until she came level with the boat’s shattered front windows. She kept her hands up, thankful for the day-glo orange of her hardshell. A twitchy gunner might pop her without thinking, but if she had survived charging two PLAN Marines unarmed, she figured whatever force was watching over her would have to have one hell of a sense of humor to end her now. Still, she scanned her HUD for the boat’s radio net, and breathed a sigh of relief when she found it was still active and bridged in. “Admiral Oliver, United States Coast Guard. I’m unarmed. Permission to come aboard?”

  “Holy shit, Jane,” came a deep singer’s base. “I should have figured the guard would come to the rescue.”

  She crouched her way up the bow and through the window, Pervez following, dragging the Chinese anti-materiel gun behind her. The inside of the small boat was completely destroyed. The binnacle had clearly caught fire and been put out with foam retardant, which had frozen solid in the freezing lunar atmosphere. The cabin interior was so holed with hornet-rounds that it looked like some kind of metallic cheese. Two dead sailors and a marine had been lain on their backs in the fan tail. A single remaining sailor cradled the hornet gun that had probably saved Oliver’s life. She knelt beside a man in a marine hardshell that had clearly been compromised. Looking through the visor, Oliver could see the failsafe mechanism had fired, shrinkwrapping General Fraser. She could still make out his face through the clouding of the emergency oxygen, smiling up at her. “Guess we’re one and two now, Jane. You still have to save me one more time.”

  “Are you OK?” Oliver knelt beside him, scanning the hard shell for an entry wound.

  “I’ll make it,” Fraser said. “Round came in through the back, didn’t exit. Must have come a long way and spent some of its force tearing through the hull. Damn, Jane. It’s good to see you. I really thought we were done here.”

  “Hey there,” Chief’s voice sounded on the radio as he and McGrath ducked through the front window. “You OK, sir?”

  “I’ll pull through,” Fraser said. “How are my marines?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Chief said. “We were with Lieutenant Koenig and Gunny Fujimori, but we lost them when our rover took a roll. Couldn’t find their radios after. Still missing two of our own, too.”

  Fraser grunted. “We’ll find them. What’s going on out there?”

  “Well,” Chief looked up at the lunar sky over his shoulder, back to Fraser. “We’ve got the making of the second Battle of Trafalgar overhead, sir. So far, it seems like neither side wants to write the page just yet.”

  “OK,” Fraser said. “Jane, help me up. We should probably get ourselves somewhere out of the hot zone in case this whole thing decides to touch off.”

  Oliver leaned down, got a shoulder under Fraser’s armpit, levered him to his feet. He grunted, swayed. Oliver froze, but Fraser blinked, shook his head, straightened. He looked at her, saw the concern in her eyes and chuckled. “Lemme guess, you disobeyed orders when they told you to stay put.”

  Oliver shrugged, but not with enough force for the motion to show through her hardshell. “You sure you’re OK?”

  “I am now. Thanks for saving our bacon, Jane.”

  “Ah,” Oliver looked at her feet, “figured I owed you.”

  They limped their way toward the front window. The sailor joined them, taking most of Fraser’s weight. Oliver let him go, felt a sudden surge run through her. She had almost died. They both had. There were so many things she would have said to Tom, if only she’d known. She wasn’t going to miss the chance now. She was never going to miss the chance again. “I’m… I’m really glad you’re OK,” she blurted out.

  “Me too,” said Fraser. “I suppose we’re at war with China now, huh?”

  “I guess we won’t know until we get back on the Obama.”

  “Reckon we better get about it.”

  “Not me,” Oliver said, “I gotta take care of something.”

  “Jesus, Jane. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  She beckoned to her crew, turned, started crouching her way through the window. “So? They can fire me. SAR-1, on me.”

  CHAPTER 15

  You are my rainbow to keep. My eyes will always be watching you; never will I lose sight of you.

  VESNA BAILEY, NOTES TO MY DAUGHTER BEFORE YOU GO

  They found Ho and Okonkwo sheltering under a pile of rubber belting and plastic hose. “I have no idea where the hell it all came from,” Okonkwo radioed after Pervez picked up his radio signature and bounded over to dig him out. “Storage container must have taken a round and went up in the air. One second, XO and I were getting our bearings, the next we were underneath all this crap.”

  “Well, it looks like it kept you out of sight,” Oliver said once she got close enough to bridge to his radio. It turned out her antennae was intact, but its range was shot. She lost Pervez every time she moved more than a few feet away, even with line of sight; after a few frustrating attempts to maintain the correct distance, she gave up and held her coxswain’s hand. “How’s XO?”

  “XO is fine,” Ho’s voice crackled in her ears, “but he doesn’t want to risk aggravating his laser burn, so if you kind souls wouldn’t mind digging me out from underneath this heap that would be awful swell.”

  “Christ,” Oliver said as she knelt beside Chief and began throwing debris over her shoulder. “That shot sure as hell didn’t knock the whining out of you.”

  “Is it over, boss?” Ho asked as they reached him and helped him wincing to his feet.

  “For now it is,” Oliver said, “but this is one hell of a standoff. Someone blinks wrong and they’re going to start shooting again. We had capital ships engaged, at least fifty dead, I’d bet. No way we can just sweep this one under the rug. Let’s get you into atmosphere, Wen. I don’t like the thought of just that compromised suit between you and the exosphere.”

  “Sure, boss,” Ho said, “Okonkwo can get me to one of the boats.”

  “I’ll take you, Wen.” Oliver bent to sling his arm over her shoulder.

  “No, boss, I think you’ve got something else to take care of not far from here.”

  Oliver froze. It was a long time before she could speak, but at last she managed a brief swallow and, “Where?”

  Ho pointed to a hab on the horizon. A line of Helium-3 furnaces had gone down like dominoes beside it, tumbled over one another to sever the heat-exchange piping that ran up its scarred sides. “I couldn’t get a good look, boss, but it seems like it might have taken some fire.”

  “And you’re sure it’s hers?”

  “Absolutely sure. Had some time to connect to the chamber of commerce intranet while I was lying there. Alice was very careful to file all her paperwork and keep it up to date. I even saw the deed. That’s her mining stake and her residence. You go check it out, I’ll get to atmosphere and see how bad I got cooked.”

  “Thank you, Wen,” Oliver was already up and bounding toward the lopsided bubble on the horizon.

  “Don’t sweat it boss,” Ho radioed back. “Just do me a favor, huh? Let me know wh
en you’ve confirmed she’s OK?”

  “You know I will–” but then she was out of range and the radio signal dropped.

  The hab grew in her vision as the PLAN Marines she’d charged just a short while ago had, and just as with them, she could feel her life hanging in the balance. Oliver knew if she found her daughter’s body, she’d be lost. There would be nothing left, no coming back from a void as black and as complete as that which swirled above her. No. Alice had to be alive. Because if she wasn’t, then Oliver surely would die with her.

  As she bounded around the hab’s edge she could see the massive crack that had been ripped in its side where a hatch cover from some unlucky small boat had been blown off and flown into the wall. The inside was exposed to the vacuum of the lunar surface and Oliver could see papers and houseplants, throw pillows and broken crockery all rimed with gray ice. She was finally getting what she now realized was a dearly held wish – to see the inside of her daughter’s home, flash frozen. Oliver shimmied her way up the crack until it widened enough to admit her, then let herself drop down through it and into the living room. It had been neat before the hatch had ripped it open, but now her daughter’s sparse décor – ultra-modern plastic chairs, a wide-screen projection monitor dominating one entire wall across from what looked like a foam combination couch-bed – was all coated with a thin sparkling layer of regolith dust. Oliver could see Alice’s desk, smashed in half beneath a chunk of the hab’s roof. Peeking out from beneath it, glass covering shattered, was the same photograph of her daughter’s wedding day that Oliver had kept with her every day since it had been taken.

  A moment later her radio crackled, and Chief and Pervez came through the hatch. “You could have just used the door, boss.”

  Oliver looked up at them, amazed they existed, that other human beings could somehow come into the sacred bubble that was her investigation of the ruins of her daughter’s house. “I figured it wouldn’t work.”

  “Power’s still on,” Chief said. He looked around. “I take it you didn’t find her?”

  “Haven’t really started looking yet.”

  “I’ll look around the grounds and the furnaces,” Chief said, heading back toward the door.

  Pervez headed for the spiral staircase winding its way down to the subsurface level. “I’ll check the hold, ma’am.”

  Oliver caught Chief’s eye as he stepped out the door, felt her throat close. “Thank you.”

  Chief nodded, embarrassed, then met her gaze. “Alice is alive, boss. We’re going to find her.”

  And then Oliver couldn’t speak, so she turned from him, and made her way inch by inch through her daughter’s house, opening drawers, closets and cupboards, as if her daughter would somehow be hiding in them as she had when she was a little girl.

  After what felt like an hour she felt Pervez taking her by the shoulder, gently steering her around to face her. “Ma’am,” she said.

  “Just let me do another round,” Oliver said. “Maybe I missed…”

  “Ma’am,” Pervez shook her head. “We’ve been over it again and again. Your daughter isn’t here.”

  Alice is gone, Oliver’s mind repeated to her again and again. Alice is gone. And though she knew that until she saw her daughter’s body, that meant she could still be alive, she wept just the same.

  Oliver slipped into a fog. She was dimly aware of sailors ushering her onto a Navy small boat, of that boat lifting them up into a huge blot of shadow, of hands gently steering her out of the Obama’s launch bay and through a maze of passages into a room. Somewhere along the way she had been stripped out of her hardshell, and she had no idea how much time had passed before she looked up and saw Ho leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded across his chest. He was wearing a blue hospital gown and a medical bracelet. Oliver could see a lump underneath the gown where a broad bandage swatched his abdomen.

  Oliver looked down at her palms, blazing like a coal was cupped between them. Someone had given her a mug of tea. “Peppermint,” she said.

  “Supposed to relax you,” Wen said. “At least that’s what it says on the bag.”

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I’m OK,” he said. “If you have to get shot, CO2 laser is a pretty good thing to get shot with. I’m probably going to be down a kidney but we won’t know for sure for a few days.”

  She knew she should be focused on him, his wound. But her mouth moved on its own, blurting out what mattered most to her. “I can’t find Alice,” she said to her reflection in the surface of the hot water.

  “I know,” Ho said. “I’ve already put her name and description in with the ground crews. They’re looking for her as we speak. Chief and Pervez are out there too. Okonkwo went to help them and McGrath wanted to go too, but I ordered him to stay. Guy’s been banged up enough for one tour.”

  “Thanks, Wen,” Oliver said. “I’ll finish this and then I’ll suit up and head out too.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Ho said. “That’s not going to happen.”

  She looked up at him, frustration began to tug at the back of her throat. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re confined to quarters for now. That comes down from the top. Thought it would be better if you heard it from me.”

  Oliver stood, her legs beginning to shake. “Wen, did you not hear what I just fucking said to you: I can’t find my goddamn daughter–”

  “I know,” Ho said, “and it doesn’t matter. There are multiple teams of professional search-and-rescue operators down there right now doing that very thing.”

  “They need my–”

  “No, boss, they don’t. What they need for once is for you to stay the fuck out of the way and let them do their jobs. You’re a goddamn admiral. And I know this is the hardest thing I’ve ever asked you to do, but you are going to have to act like it, at least for now.”

  Oliver looked back down at her tea, fought to keep the tears from coming, but saw her reflection ripple as the drops fell and broke the surface. “I can’t. Wen, I can’t anymore.”

  “Yes, you can.” Ho had crossed the room, placed a hand on her shoulder. “Take as much time as you need here, and when you’re done, call Allen. He’s still on the control floor at SPACETACLET, and it will come as no surprise that he wants to talk to you.”

  “I can’t, Wen,” Oliver looked up at him pleading. “Not without Alice. Not without Tom and Alice. I can’t do it.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Ho reached down and pulled her into his arms, cradling her head against his chest. Oliver realized that it was the first time he’d ever hugged her. “You don’t have to do anything but wait here, and finish your tea, and then make a phone call. Just one phone call, and then it’s over and you can go.”

  “Go where?” Oliver asked. “Without Alice, where will I go?”

  But Ho didn’t answer. He only disengaged from her and touched her cheek. “You’re not alone,” he said. “While I draw breath, while my wife and children draw breath, you will always have a home.”

  And then he was gone, leaving Oliver with the tea cooling between her slick palms, and the shaking of her shoulders, heaving under the weight of sobs she only now realized had been building for so very long.

  When, at long last, she was done, Oliver made her way to the terminal and receiver set into the wall of the medical bay where’d she’d been set to cool her heels. An orderly answered as soon as she picked it up. “Obama medical.”

  “This is Admiral Oliver, I need a line to–”

  “Yes, admiral, I’ll put you through now.” Oliver’s stomach clenched. However bad this was, they’d been very careful to order the admin staff to put her through without delay. Whatever they do to me, they have to find my daughter. They can court martial me. They can lock me up and throw away the key. But they have to find my daughter.

  A moment later, the receiver crackled, “Jane.”

  “Admiral Allen, sir, I just want you to know that I–”

  “
Jane,” Oliver realized with a start that the familiar voice was not Allen’s, “your XO told me about your daughter. I want you to know we’re doing everything we can to find her.”

  It took Oliver’s mind another moment of stumbling through surreal fog to place the voice. Zhukov. The Commandant. The old man.

  “Sir…” she managed.

  If Zhukov noticed the tremor in her voice, he gave no sign. “How are you doing, Jane?”

  “I’m all right, sir,” she lied. “Are we at war with China?”

  “Not yet. If we were, I’d probably be radioactive vapor. But, then again, so would a lot of people in Beijing. Nobody wants that,” he paused, sighed, “so right now they’re calling it a standoff.”

  “People died, sir, that’s hardly a standoff.”

  “If you’ve got a better word that the news can run with that won’t get everybody on the Moon killed, I’m all ears.”

  “You make a good point, sir.”

  “I know it. And that brings me to the reason for my call.”

  He paused again, and Oliver was surprised to find herself calm. He could court-martial her. He could demote her. Hell, he could have her flogged and publicly executed. It wouldn’t touch her. Alice was missing. And until Oliver found her, nothing else would ever matter again.

  “It’s a good segue, actually,” the old man finally found the words. “We could call this a battle with lives lost on both sides. A complete breakdown of diplomacy and law, and the seeds of the first war in space, and that would be accurate, right?”

  “Dark, but accurate, sir,” Oliver said.

  “But you could also say that there was a standoff at Sinus Medii, and that tempers flared, and that both sides are rattling sabers and making dire threats, but that all it looks like is another Cold War, and that both sides, being nuclear-armed, don’t want to press forward into open conflict, terrified as to where that might lead. That would be equally accurate, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That’s the story I like better, sir.”