by Rick Partlow
The female Marine blinked, perhaps not believing her eyes or perhaps still stunned by the blast. Lyta felt a slight haze of concussion across her own thoughts, but her actions were automatic, a product of instinct built from thousands of hours of training and more experience than she cared to remember. The Marine swung the stun wand at her sidearm, clumsy and ineffective; she’d clearly never used it as a weapon, only as a torture device. Just as clearly, she didn’t take Lyta seriously as a threat. Both were mistakes.
Lyta didn’t block the stun wand, she attacked the arm, slamming her forearm into the muscle and nerve just behind the Marine’s wrist. The younger woman’s mouth shaped an “O” of pain and surprise and the stunner went flying down the hallway. Lyta ignored it. The prod was a terror weapon; she was more lethal with her bare hands.
The transition from the disarming strike to the follow-up across the throat was flowing, natural, sinking home with an affirmation of the hard weapons-soft targets philosophy of unarmed combat she’d taught for so long. The Marine gagged, eyes going wide, hands coming back to her throat automatically, without volition, leaving everything else wide open. A straight punch to the solar plexus blew the wind out of the younger woman’s lungs, then a leg-sweep put her down flat on her back, unable to breathe.
Lyta stomped downward. Once. Twice. A last time and there was no movement. She bent down to grab the magnetic key at the dead Marine’s belt and, as she did, she risked a glimpse into the open cell where the Starkad guard had been standing. Inside was an old woman strapped to a chair at the center of the cell, head hanging limply, eyes open, skin already beginning to turn blue.
The stun wand and the woman’s age added two and two together and the sum was a heart attack. Lyta didn’t feel anger so much as disgust, but she had no time for either. Julia was still sitting stunned in the hallway, staring first at the dead Marine and then at Lyta, then back again. Lyta ignored her, pushing past into the open cell and finding the woman she presumed was Momma Salvaggio crouched just inside. Salvaggio pounced toward her as if she expected her to be one of the Starkad Marines, but Lyta had anticipated the reaction and caught the smaller woman behind the arm, slamming her into the wall.
“I’m here to break you out, you dumb bitch,” she shouted in Salvaggio’s ear. “Now come along or I’ll leave you for Grieg to torture you to death the way he did that poor civilian at the end of the hall.”
That seemed to get through to her. The diminutive mercenary nodded and said something Lyta couldn’t make out. She ignored it and pushed Salvaggio out the cell door ahead of her, pausing to grab Julia by the arm and haul her to her feet. The door back into the Constabulary office was still closed, but it would only be a matter of seconds before Grieg figured out there was no threat from the outside and came back through to investigate. And a locked door would just send him out to the back even faster.
She figured out her hearing was returning when the rasp of her breathing finally overcame the tinny whine in her ears as she was pulling the key card she’d taken from the dead Marine out of her cloak pocket.
“Hurry, damn it,” Salvaggio urged, her voice muffled despite the other woman being right next to her. It only made her easier to ignore.
Lyta touched the card to the lock of the rear exit and yanked it open. If Chloe hadn’t come through…
The rumble of the alcohol-fueled engine vibrating through the door let her know the girl had delivered on her promise even before she saw the open-topped frame and the broad, knobby tires of the runabout. Its rear-mounted engine oscillated violently, as if it were about to shake itself apart every second, but it was what they had, and Chloe was already waving urgently for them to get in. She didn’t need to tell Salvaggio twice—the woman practically threw herself into the front passenger seat without even the decency to call “shotgun.”
Lyta guided Julia into the back seat, grabbing the roll bar and yelling, “go!” before she even had a foot into the car. The rumble of the engine turned into the fierce, feral bellow of a wild horse and the tires ripped up chunks of earth and spat them out the back as it accelerated away from the jail. The roll bar yanked brutally at Lyta’s hands and shoulders, but she kicked her legs over the edge of the frame and fell into the hard, bare-metal seat.
Lyta twisted around in the seat, watching behind them as the little runabout raced down the dirt road. A cluster of dark figures was running out the back door, over a hundred meters away now. She saw Grieg snatch a rifle from the hands of one of his Marines and bring it to his shoulder and she yelled a warning to Chloe just before the first bullets began whizzing by the side of the car. The stutter of the automatic rifle fire followed on the heels of the actual rounds and it seemed to spur Chloe more than Lyta’s warning.
The runabout swerved wildly and Lyta grabbed desperately at the roll bar, the rough, unpolished metal gouging into her hands. She dropped back into her seat, giving up on any attempt to look behind them in favor of staying inside the car. Seconds later, Chloe veered three meters off the dirt track, slamming the fat tires over a cluster of granite sticking up through the dirt and pack sand. The impact nearly threw Lyta out of the vehicle and she grabbed at Julia’s goatskin leather belt to keep her from tumbling over the other side.
There were no seat restraints in the back, though Salvaggio was quickly and desperately strapping herself into the front passenger seat. Lyta opened her mouth to caution Chloe about her driving, but a burst of cannon fire sent a gout of dirt and smoke exploding up from their left changed her mind. She risked a quick glimpse back and saw a scout mech loping out from the edge of town, long strides taking it between the city hall and the next building over, barely squeezing through the space.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered. That was a Peregrine, with a top speed of fifty kilometers an hour. “Chloe!” she yelled at the young woman, leaning forward close to her ear. “I don’t know how fast this damned thing goes, but it needs to go faster!”
Chloe grinned broadly and pushed the accelerator down to the floor. Lyta grabbed at the edge of the seat and cursed into the wind.
This is, she decided, so not going to be fun.
19
Francesca Hayden, Petty Officer Third Class—Or is it Second Class now? she wondered—rolled over in her sleeping bag, threw an arm over her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. No one had slept much last night. There’d been work to do, camouflage netting to set up, covered fighting positions to dig and everyone had taken a turn at the labor, even the mech-jocks. Even Colonel Conner. She wasn’t even bothering to think of him as Colonel Slaughter, though she knew she should be. The importance of the cover seemed to have faded for everyone with the loss of Terminus.
Shoot. She couldn’t shut her brain off. She didn’t want to check the time, but she figured she hadn’t got more than four hours of sleep since polishing off a late breakfast. She still felt absolutely exhausted, but she could already tell she wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, not without asking one of the Ranger medics for a pill.
She sighed and sat up, putting her back against the rock wall. She’d tried to bury herself back behind the supplies the refugees from Revelation had brought with them, but right now it was just making it too stuffy and close in the heat of the day. The rock felt cooler, made her breath come easier. She closed her eyes again, wondering if she could sleep sitting up.
“You doing okay?”
She blinked and rubbed a hand over her face, stifling a yawn. Had she actually fallen asleep? The light looked different now, coming in lower over the canyon walls. People were beginning to move around, their troops and the civilians. She tried to sit up and face whoever had spoken to her and the stiffness in her neck and back confirmed she’d done it. It felt like a triumph…
Slowly, the face came into focus, the strong chin, the light brown hair cut short to frame her face. She still wore her flight suit, but she had an armored tactical vest over it, a handgun tucked in a holster across her chest.
“Lieutenant
Margolis,” Franny stammered, scrambling to her feet and going to attention. “I mean, yes, ma’am, I’m fine.”
“Relax, Hayden,” Katy said with a chuckle, waving a hand dismissively. “Have a seat. Plenty of time before we all have to be looking busy. And it’s Commander now, not that it matters out here.”
Franny looked around, hesitant to squat back down on the ground. Instead, she found a pile of wooden crates someone had stacked up and sat down on top of them, cautiously at first to make sure they wouldn’t collapse beneath her. Katy leaned against the rock face beside her, squinting out of the overhanging lean-to and watching one of the mech-jocks climbing down from his machine under the cover of a stretched-out camo net. Franny realized after a moment the machine was a Sentinel and the mech-jock was Logan Conner.
“Do you worry about him, ma’am?” she asked, feeling daring all of a sudden. “I mean, when he gets inside that thing and goes into combat?”
Katy shot her a sidelong look, canny and knowing.
“I do. And I know he worries about me when I’m flying overwatch in my assault shuttle. But it’s who we are. I wouldn’t have fallen for him so quickly if he’d been anyone else.”
“So, you knew right away?” It was a stupid question, a childish question and she kicked herself for it. It was something her little sister would have asked. She tried not to let the other woman see her wincing. Katy Margolis wasn’t much older than her, but she seemed decades her senior simply for all the life she’d lived.
“I did,” the pilot admitted. “I think when it’s right, you always know. When it’s not, you try to convince yourself, but that never works. And ignoring it when it’s right never works, either.”
Katy smiled broadly, as if she’d been playing a game, pretending not to know what Franny was talking about, but couldn’t keep it up any longer.
“Terry’s a great guy,” she said flatly. “He’s smart as all hell, of course, but he’s also brave and loyal and he’s always trying to do the right thing, not just the easy thing. And I’m not just saying that because I’m in love with his brother. But I’ll be square with you, Francesca…”
“Franny,” she corrected Katy automatically.
“Franny. I’ll be square with you, he’s been wrapped up in his career for a long time and I think he may have forgotten the rules of the game.”
“The game?” Franny asked, frowning in confusion.
“Oh, girl,” Katy said, laughing softly. “The two of you may be perfect for each other.” She shook her head and went on. “He’s dense about relationships, like most men, but he’s also been on his own for a long time now. You’re going to have to be direct and you’re probably going to have to be patient with him, too.”
“I thought I was being patient,” she moaned, burying her face in her hands.
“Here,” Katy said, fishing something out of her thigh pocket and handing it to the younger woman. Franny took it; it was a fresh-strip, still in the wrapper. “Clean your teeth and go talk to him before he decides stars are more interesting than people again.”
Franny obeyed numbly, feeling the tingle in her mouth as the strip killed the bacteria as it dissolved. She took a deep breath, stood up and headed out across the canyon with a purposeful stride. Terrin was sitting half-in the front passenger’s seat of one of the Ranger APCs, with David Carpenter and his wife, who she’d come to know was named Anya, locked into an argument with Captain Lee, Lyta’s second in command.
“We have the long-range transmitter,” Terrin said, gesticulating as he emphasized each word. “We used it to contact you. Why not try to see if Lyta’s ‘link could pick up the signal?”
“We need to make sure our daughter is safe,” Anya Carpenter insisted, leaning in toward the open door.
Lee rubbed at his temples with his fingers as if the whole conversation were giving him a headache.
“Because if she can pick the signal up with her ‘link,” he pointed out, his patience obviously strained, “so can Starkad with their detectors. The only reason they didn’t when you sent it originally was because their satellites weren’t in the right position. And if she tried to answer, she’d just be revealing her own position. I know you’re worried about your daughter,” he said to the Carpenters, “but we can’t do anything right now without putting her at more risk.”
“I’m sorry,” Terrin told the couple. The air seemed to have gone out of him.
The two of them said something so quietly she couldn’t hear, but the woman grasped Terrin’s arm before she moved off. Lee waited until they were both out of earshot before shooting Terrin an annoyed glare.
“You know better than that,” he chided the younger man. “Hell, you actually know how this shit works…” Lee tapped the side of the vehicle’s communications console. “…which is more than I do.”
“I do,” Terrin admitted. “But they needed someone to listen to them, and I figured if you told them no, it would at least seem like someone important had. Sorry, Captain.”
Lee nodded, waving off the apology.
“It’s okay, that’s part of being an officer I guess.”
Terrin shook the Ranger’s hand and got out of the vehicle, stopping abruptly when he saw Franny walking up to him.
“Oh, hey, Franny,” he said. He had the look she’d only seen from deer crossing the road at night on the back-roads outside Argos, caught in the headlights of a car. “How are you doing?”
“Did you get any sleep, Terrin?” she asked him, already suspecting the answer from the dark circles under his eyes.
He shrugged.
“There was stuff to talk about with…” He stumbled over the words, probably trying to decide which name to use. “…with my brother. I had to let him know everything that had happened.” He squinted up at the afternoon sun. “I wish I could let Dad know I’m okay.”
“Walk with me a second,” she urged him, extending a hand.
He took it, perhaps a bit hesitantly, his grasp cool and dry in the desert heat. She led him back down the canyon, past the fighting positions the Rangers had set up, around a curve where the river had once wound, to where the walls closed in again, and finally to a spot shaded from the sun by an overhanging lip of rock. She pulled him beneath the overhang, blinking and letting her eyes go wider without the sun in them.
“I just wanted to tell you,” she said once they were nestled in the shade, so close she could feel his breath tease at her hair, “that I know you weren’t really going to cut a deal with Salvaggio, that you were just playing for time.”
“That’s good,” he sighed, sagging back against the rock wall, glancing at it first before he leaned on it. She knew why—they had red, stinging ants here that liked to sneak inside your collar or sleeve or pant leg and announce their presence with a nasty bite. “With everything else going on, I didn’t want to think we weren’t friends anymore.”
“Are we friends, Terrin?” she asked him. She wasn’t sure where the words were coming from because they scared the crap out of her, but she was channeling Katy and trying to be brave and open. “Is that what you want?”
She could feel the warmth coming off his skin and could hear his breath quicken.
“I mean,” he stammered, meeting her eyes almost as if he was scared to look away “I, you know I like you.”
“Do I know that?” she asked, forcing herself to stay close, not to run away like she wanted desperately to. “How would I know if you don’t tell me?”
“I…uh, I did tell you.” He was leaning closer now and she screwed up her courage and leaned forward to kiss him, remembering what Katy said.
“Hey, you wanna help a girl out here?”
“Lyta!” Terrin exclaimed, and then he was running past her so quickly Franny nearly lost her balance.
She couldn’t blame him, though, because it was Colonel Randell. She was walking slowly and painfully up the path, half carrying the girl, Chloe Carpenter. Chloe’s left arm was in a makeshift splint and dried blood p
lastered the hair to the left side of her head from a cut in her scalp. Lyta had a few rips in her borrowed clothes and scrapes and bruises visible through them, but otherwise looked healthy, if exhausted. Franny felt a brief surge of relief that the two of them were alive and safe…until she saw who was following them.
She didn’t recognize the other teenage girl, though she seemed to be cut from the same cloth as Chloe and she assumed the girl was one of her friends from town. The older woman the girl was helping limp up the trail, though, her Franny recognized very well.
It was Momma Salvaggio.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Franny blurted, forgetting for a moment she was speaking to a Colonel.
Lyta didn’t seem to notice the insubordination. “That, Petty Officer Hayden,” she said, sighing as Terrin took some of the weight of the barely-conscious Chloe off her shoulder, “is a long story.”
“Why the hell shouldn’t we just kill her?” David Carpenter demanded. A murmuring grumble of agreement rose up from the rest of the crowd.
There were more of them now, called in from farmsteads and settlements outside Revelation City for the meeting, sneaking in under cover of the newly-fallen night and bringing with them a few more vehicles and a few more personal weapons hidden during Salvaggio’s term ruling the colony.
She was, Logan Conner mused, quite the popular lady among the locals, though her infamy had, perhaps, been recently eclipsed by Colonel Grieg and his Starkad Marines. Still, there was a case to be made and he was going to have to be the one to make it. Lyta had wanted to do it, but while she was better at infantry tactics, infiltration and extraction than he would ever be, trying to convince civilians of anything was not in her skill set. She was more likely to start cracking skulls together, which wouldn’t do them any good.
Logan squeezed Katy’s hand for a last bit of emotional support, then stepped into the light at the folding table set up under the lean-to. Most of the fifty or sixty locals gathered around were outside the cover, their faces barely visible in the shadows, but they were all of a type. Farmers, shepherds, mechanics, carpenters, builders…men and women and boys and girls who worked with their hands, who weren’t afraid of a fight. His problem was that, until recently, their fight had been with Salvaggio.