Mission Pack 2: Missions 5-8 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  “We tried to track them,” another of the marines chimed in. “But we came across a field littered with dead wolverine beetles. Figured they were fine on their own.”

  “Wolverine beetles?”

  “Picture a fifty-kilo insect with a taste for mammal flesh,” Davies said. “They’re nocturnal and hunt in packs. There aren’t more than a handful of us who’ve killed one, let alone a pile of them.”

  “What about Carl?”

  “You mean Ramsey?” a new voice asked. A newcomer entered the chamber. He was gaunt, with corded muscle beneath loose flesh. She could only imagine it was Azrael. “I’ve sent him to infiltrate the navals’ camp and kill Lieutenant Kwon.”

  “Why would he do that?” Tanny asked, perplexed. If there were three hundred humans alive on Ithaca, there were at least 250 better suited than Carl to assassinate someone.

  “For your safety,” Azrael replied, clasping his wrists in a gesture that would have looked more wizardly had he been wearing sleeves. “Yours and your crew’s. I have his ship watched, and if he betrays us, we’ll know you’re our enemies and kill them.”

  Tanny froze. “They’re dead. I saw them on my way here.”

  “Who’s dead?” Davies asked.

  “I don’t know the names,” Tanny said. She gave descriptions of the men and their equipment.

  Davies stared at her. “Hughs and Matthews…”

  “Send out a search party at first light,” Azrael snapped. “If Ramsey doesn’t know—”

  Tanny laughed out loud before she could stop herself. “Doesn’t know? He set you up. Mort was back at the Mobius, and Carl knew it. Mort’s a real wizard—no offense. He not only got you to set him free, he convinced you to send two good men to their deaths.”

  Azrael strode forward, shaking his head. “No. Ramsey didn’t convince me of anything. This was our opportunity to—”

  “He gave you what you wanted,” Tanny said. She shook her head. “You knew him back in the navy. He was a loudmouthed, cocky jackass back then. But he’s a wanted man now. Jesus, how could I not see it?”

  “Devraa,” Davies corrected softly.

  “Fucker gets in and out of disasters, always trading other people’s lives to save his own sorry skin. Chance after chance… I can’t believe I… no, I came here for Kubu, and even Mriy.”

  “Take her into custody,” Azrael ordered. “We have the bait we need to get Ramsey back.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Tanny asked. “You blew your chance. You won’t get close to him again.”

  “The two marines we sent to deliver him to the navals will watch for treachery,” Azrael said.

  “If you’re lucky—very, very lucky—your marines aren’t dead,” Tanny said.

  Azrael stabbed a finger at Tanny. “What are you all waiting for? Remove her!”

  “She’s one of us now,” Davies said, stepping in front of Tanny. “Devraa is wise.”

  “Devraa is wise,” the rest of the marines repeated.

  Tanny joined in with the chant. For the first time since she left the service, she felt like she was part of something larger than herself.

  # # #

  Carl sauntered into the chasm village like someone who didn’t have two spears pointed at him. The guards were just a couple of poor saps doing their job, after all. They couldn’t exactly let Carl wander into their headquarters unescorted after he told them he was sent to kill their commander. The fact that he’d quickly added that it had been a ruse was the only reason he wasn’t tied up or worse. Of course, the fact that he still owed one of them fifty terras in six-year-old poker debts probably helped his lifespan as well.

  “Not a bad place you’ve got here,” Carl noted, looking around with dutiful attentiveness. He really didn’t give a dry shit about their P-tech hovels or their steel alloy spears. It was as if everyone on both sides had stripped the Odysseus of every handrail on every stairway and catwalk, then ground one end to a lethal point. As if a wrecked ship wasn’t hazardous enough, it would have failed the Inspector General’s safety audit as a falling hazard. “Running water and everything.” With idle curiosity, he kicked a small rock over the edge of the trail and watched it bounce and clatter to the chasm floor. It was certainly a long way down.

  The comment earned him a gentle prodding in the back with the butt end of a handrail. “Can it, Blackjack. We done pretty good around here. Should’ve seen the place when we moved in. Weren’t even carpets.” Apparently Parker had a keener ear for sarcasm than most scanner techs. Carl guessed that anyone who depended on A-tech for his primary role on the Odysseus had gotten bumped down to militia duty.

  Carl continued along down the chasm-side trail, leading the way as if he was the one who lived there. “So you boys and girls have been taking orders from a second L.T.?” Carl asked, clucking his tongue. “And a science officer at that. You know those ranks are honorary. Sound general quarters and the datapad commandos all scurry under their bunks.”

  “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this isn’t a combat mission,” Parker replied.

  “At least not most of the time,” Doherty added. Both he and Parker were more svelte than Carl remembered them. Parker had monitored hostile comm activity, a job that kept him parked at a console with a headset on for eight-hour shifts. Doherty had been an administrative assistant to Commander Regan, the XO. Now they were both boiled down to muscle and bone, looking like scrawny marines. At least Kwon’s people were dressed in Earth Navy uniforms, even if it consisted mostly of undershirts and slacks that had been cut off at the knee.

  “Is she still…?” Carl let the question hang.

  Parker needed no detail to get Carl’s gist. “No. She’s not.”

  “Shame,” Carl said. “I guess a few years out in the jungle probably changes you.”

  “You haven’t changed,” Doherty said. “That shit Scarecrow shoveled us even half true?”

  “She can’t lie worth a damn,” Carl replied with a shrug. He peered over the edge of the trail. A crowd was gathering below. He’d been spotted, so he waved. “But, uh… yeah. We took care of business when your star-drive freaked out. None of us blamed you guys. Officially your whole crew was listed killed in action.”

  “Was there a big fuss?” Doherty asked. “I mean, not every day Earth Navy loses a battleship. I always pictured them having a memorial and a plaque in Terran War Museum. ‘Gone, but never forgotten’ or something, you know?”

  “Nope,” Carl replied. “Sorry. High Command wanted to hush it up. Kept everything low-key to non-existent. Shuffled me and my squad around for a couple months before quietly kicking us all out of the service. Paid us off, threatened us with treason charges, you name it.”

  “Fucking Mandela Administration,” Parker muttered through gritted teeth. “Always looking for the holovid snap; don’t give two shits about the navy. Can’t wait for the Solar Council to swing back to good ‘ole Blue-and-Green.”

  Carl cleared his throat. “I’m no poli-sci analyst, but I think I remember an election a few years back. I don’t think Mandela is Prime Citizen anymore.”

  Parker snorted. “That blue hair of yours… I bet you vote Free Mind without even reading the names.”

  “Those vapor-brains?” Carl asked. “Why would I—oh, the hair thing. No, I got cursed by an azrin swordmaster. If this was a dye job or a follicle it would’ve changed back when we got de-teched.”

  “The hell?” Doherty asked. “Back that one up and hit it again.”

  “I was on vacation,” Carl said. “I took sword fighting lessons from this cranky old azrin on his people’s homeworld. I somehow offended him—”

  “No surprise there,” Parker muttered.

  “—and he put a curse on me, turned my hair blue.”

  “This place doesn’t seem to mess with bio,” Doherty said. “We’ve got a couple of follicle jobs here—nothing particularly purty like yours—but they stayed the altered color.”

  “I’m sticking to my azrin curse
story,” Carl said. “When we get offworld, you can check the omni. I was in the Silde Slims Cadet Racer Challenge; my personal bio got scoured with a particle cannon.”

  Parker chuckled and slapped Doherty in the shoulder. “Get a load of this guy. Marooned here a couple days, still thinking he’s getting off. Just wait ‘til it turns into years, Ramsey. You’ll get used to the idea that this is the end of the orbit.”

  “You boys still up for the occasional wager?”

  The two erstwhile petty officers exchanged a glance. Parker raised his eyebrows. Doherty shrugged. Parker answered for both of them. “Sure. What’s the bet?”

  “I find a way off this moon, you come work for me,” Carl said.

  “And if you don’t?” Parker said.

  “Your pick of the creature comforts on my ship,” Carl replied.

  “I don’t want this shit dragging out. ‘Oh, it’ll be this week, I promise.’ You got a month,” Parker said. He looked over to Doherty, who gave the bargain a nod.

  “You’ve got to remember, no one back home wants to hear you survived—well, at HQ, anyway,” Carl said. “If I get you out of here, it’s got to stay on the scrambled comm.”

  Doherty narrowed his eyes. “What the hell you into, Ramsey? You some sort of pirate?”

  “Naw, nothing that nefarious,” Carl said. “But let’s just say that I left rules and regs behind when I took off the uniform.”

  They were getting low on the trail. It was conceivable that a tumble over the edge might even have been survivable. Soon they would be within earshot of the crowd gathering below. Carl needed to make his pitch and make it quick.

  “Listen boys, if you really want to watch another holovid, eat food you didn’t have to kill first, or experience an honest-to-God computer-regulated climate, I’m going to need a little help.”

  “Sounds kinda like we’d be taking the piss on our side of the bet.”

  “Do you really want to win?” Carl asked. He let a momentary silence stand in for an answer. “Didn’t think so. Listen, you said they’ve got a couple of my crew here? I need you to get them back to my ship. I’ve got a couple more there. I’m going to send them instructions.”

  “What kind of instructions? Anything we can relay?”

  “The crotchety old bastard I’m sending the message to is the most dangerous and suspicious person I’ve ever met.”

  “Fair enough. We send one of yours.”

  Carl slowed to let Parker and Doherty come up on either side of him, then threw an arm across their shoulders. “Just remember, boys: stick with me. I’m too stubborn to give up, too stupid to know what’s impossible, and dead set on getting the hell out of here.”

  The waiting throng at the base of the trail surged around them, bombarding Carl with questions. What was it like back in ARGO territory? Was everything they heard about Battle of Karthix true? Had he heard from this person or knew what became of that person who hadn’t been aboard the Odysseus when it was lost? There were questions about popular holovid series, sports teams, and politics. Carl answered them all, even the questions where he had no idea what he was talking about. The only thing he refused to do was lie to them about their friends and families. He might have made up endings for a romantic drama and given away a Tri-Ball Smash championship or two to the wrong team, but he didn’t sugarcoat the reaction to the loss of the Odysseus by everyone who thought it was lost with all hands.

  “If you’ll excuse me a moment?” Carl asked the crowd at a shout that cut through the continuing barrage of inquiries. He spotted Scarecrow at the edge of the crowd and threaded his way through to meet her. They made eye contact, and Carl did his best to convey play along without resorting to anything so clumsy as a wink. Without so much as a hitch in his step, he swept Scarecrow into his arms and kissed her.

  Ladies Man Carl took that opportunity to remember that her given name was Amy, that she preferred strawberry ice cream over chocolate, and that he wasn’t her commanding officer anymore. He continued the kiss for an indecently long time, long enough to make anyone watching them too closely start to get uncomfortable. Being honest with himself, he’d expected it to be more awkward. When they parted, both gasping for breath, he put his lips to her ear and whispered.

  “Marine city. Tall, six-sided gray stone building with a slight taper, and the top is a blunted point.”

  “Some sort of hexagonal obelisk?” Scarecrow—or Amy—whispered back. There was no hint of reproach in her voice. If he’d pulled the same stunt with Tanny, there would have been a threat, veiled or otherwise, mixed into her response.

  “Um, sure,” Carl replied. “Get that message to Mort. That’s the thing ruining science. The guys who brought me in can help.”

  “You trust them?”

  “Close enough.”

  She took him by the collar and kissed him again. When Carl opened his eyes, hers were staring back at him. “Yes, sir.”

  Those were words Carl didn’t hear often enough. If he played his cards right, they were ones he’d be hearing a lot more, soon enough.

  # # #

  There were two others on wood-cutting duty with Esper. Tamir and Sasha had initially tried to hide behind ranks and surnames, but she had wheedled out their given names before they even reached the harvesting site. Tamir was tall, dark-skinned, and lanky, and had taken his shirt off as soon as they set to work. Esper could certainly get used to the number of shirtless men running around this moon. Sasha was square-faced and wore a perpetual frown of concentration, as if every action she took were of cataclysmic importance. He had been a clerk in the ship’s retail outlet; she had worked in munitions logistics. Neither had found jobs in their field of expertise on Ithaca.

  The tool Esper had been given was very clearly repurposed from an insect appendage. It was a thin rod of iridescent black chitin with jagged barbs down one side, sharp enough that the woodcutters had been issued work gloves. The gloves were Earth Navy standard issue, with the fleet logo and ship name emblazoned across the backs, but the improvised saw was clearly fabricated locally. One end was wound with a strip of leather to provide a grip, and each had its own wooden sheath. It looked like a weapon wielded by a savage in a cheesy holovid where the aliens were always hostile and the heroes were outnumbered yet emerged victorious.

  “So, a math teacher, huh?” Tamir asked, sawing through the trunk of a twenty-meter-tall blade of grass. The insectile saws were lightweight, if nothing else, so working while chatting was feasible. “How’d you fall into that?”

  “Well, it was an accident, really,” Esper replied, setting to work on a trunk of her own. The inside of the grass-trees was wet, and a mush issued forth from the cut instead of sawdust. “At the seminary I double-majored in theology and mathematics. Halfway through, I cut back to a minor in math and finished my degree just in theology. I had thought the math thing had just been a hobby, but Father Emmanuel found me a post where I could teach at a One Church sponsored school. It’s a phase shift going from wrapping your head around undergraduate quantum matrices to teaching algebra to a room full of ten-year-olds.”

  “Why’d you give it up?” Sasha asked. “I mean, none of us ended up where we wanted to be, but it seems like you people came looking.”

  “Oh, I had a falling out with the church,” Esper said, leaving out the bits about a kidnapping, faking her own death, and taking up an apprenticeship with a dark wizard. “Carl was in the right place at the right time, and I latched onto his crew.”

  “Carl…” Sasha said. “Weird hearing anyone call Ramsey by his first name.”

  “It’s his middle name, technically,” Esper said. She paused to wipe sweat from her brow. Despite the conveniently lightweight saw, it was still over 30 degrees in the jungle, and an overnight rain had left the air thick with moisture.

  “Yeah, but it’s still like calling Prime Minister Mandela ‘Bobby’ or something,” Sasha said.

  Esper grinned. “Mandela was ousted last election. The Earth’s Destiny
Party took over the Solar Council and Kip Huang became Prime Minster.”

  “Kip Huang… the Finance Minister?”

  Esper nodded, letting her insect-leg saw dangle from her hand. “That’s the one.” This was a cheap way of earning a break. It felt like cheating. But there was no point wearing herself out early in the work day, with lunch not long behind them.

  Crunching in the underbrush brought the two experienced woodcutters to alert, and Esper took her cue from them and brought up her saw as a makeshift weapon. Thus far, she’d avoided any use of magic, not even to lessen her fatigue. It had been a point of pride throughout the morning that she’d managed to hold that temptation at bay as muscles began to protest their continued, unfamiliar use.

  The cutting site was an ever-expanding clearing, pared back faster than the jungle could encroach. The noise had come from the far side, across fifty meters of open ground separating Esper and her coworkers from whatever was coming. Snippets of overheard conversations danced in her thoughts: carnivorous lizards with spiny backs, swarming insects the size of lions that could jump like fleas, poisonous rodents, and birds that would swoop in and tear away a bite of flesh before flying away with their prize.

  “What’s the plan?” Esper asked.

  But before she got an answer, the noise called out a greeting. “Hey there! Just bringing you a fresh set of arms.”

  Two of the camp’s sentries stepped out into the clearing, with Charlie trailing in their wake. She made meaningful eye contact with Esper as soon as they caught sight of one another. Charlie had come for a reason; that much was obvious.

  “Not smooth, Doherty,” Sasha said, lowering her saw. “You had us thinking a spiciformis had found us.”

  “Sorry,” Doherty replied. “But this one volunteered to relieve a certain novice chopper. Yao sent us up with her.”

  More eye contact from Charlie. Was she supposed to head back to camp? That wouldn’t make any sense; Charlie had been dead set on leaving the camp with Esper, and sending her back didn’t seem like the wisest way to pull that off. No, duty relief had to have been the bait to dangle to get Yao to bite on Charlie’s scheme. Esper was going to have to find a way to refuse the reassignment without getting Charlie sent back.