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

by J. S. Morin

  A pious part of Esper tapped its foot and gave her a cross look. These weren’t thoughts nice people were supposed to have.

  “That’s sweet of you, but I’m doing fine. I’m getting the recycled air out of my lungs.” Esper took a deep breath. “Good, honest work. Tamir, Sasha, one of you should take the afternoon off instead, maybe.”

  “I don’t care, personally,” Doherty’s companion said. “But if it’s not the plastic princess coming back with us, we don’t need to stick around as guides. We’re heading back to the perimeter.” He pointed off into the jungle. “Howl for us if you change your mind.”

  Esper felt a blush warm her face, even in the Ithacan heat. It was easy to forget at times how other people tended to see her. The Mobius crew had grown accustomed to her cosmo-enhanced body, but she stood out like a powdered lady among day laborers. Her pale skin might redden under the harsh sun, but it would never darken. Her features wouldn’t grow gaunt or wrinkled from hard living. At least, that all depended on the science used to reshape her, but thus far strictly personal changes—like Carl’s vivid hairstyle—had remained intact. Still, it stung to be looked at as an object of artifice, even if, at some level, she was.

  Sasha wiped sweat from her face with a rag kept tucked in her belt. “Dunno, Tamir. How you holding up.”

  “I’m fine,” the lanky lumberjack replied. “You go. Just remember this next time.”

  Esper noted the direction where Doherty and the other sentry disappeared into the jungle. Since there was no formal Ithacan compass as far as she knew, she assigned directions based on Mars and deemed sunset to be west. That meant that the two sentries were heading southwesterly. If she and Charlie were going to avoid detection on their way back to the Mobius, they would have to loop around them—probably starting out south or southeast.

  It took a while for Charlie to receive the same orientation and training that Esper had earlier in the day. Here’s where to cut. This is how to hold the saw. That’s how to avoid getting crushed under a twelve-ton blade of grass. Esper felt like an old hand at tree-cutting as she listened to the same instructions for a second time. Eventually Charlie was turned loose on the trees, and the three of them resumed the day’s labor. After a time, Esper worked her way over to speak to Charlie without Tamir overhearing.

  “What’s the plan?” she said softly, making a point not to whisper. Whispers sometimes carried farther than it seemed they should. Sibilant sounds tickled the ears and drew curiosity.

  “Carl showed up in camp,” Charlie whispered. “He wants us to get a message to Mort.”

  “What message?” Esper asked. A giddy thrill welled inside her. It sounded like another mission brewing, which wasn’t always a good thing. But heists and schemes never failed to be interesting or exciting, and had thus far never subjected her to a day of cutting down alien trees.

  “He found out what’s keeping the tech dead on this planet.”

  “Moon,” Esper corrected.

  “Whatever. We need to give Mort directions, presumably so he can go and… I dunno, whatever wizards do to things to stop them from working.”

  “With Mort, it’s mostly fire.”

  “Might be a tough sell,” Charlie said. “It’s an stone obelisk.”

  Esper nodded. “So how do we slip away from Tamir?”

  Charlie winked and stood up. “Hey, Tamir. Where’s a girl go to water the local foliage?”

  Tamir paused his sawing and frowned. “Esper, go show her.”

  When Tamir looked away, Charlie just shrugged and headed into the jungle, leaving Esper to follow.

  Once they were out of sight of Tamir—and earshot as well—Esper pulled Charlie aside. “This is the way those two sentries went. We should—”

  “They’re waiting for us. Doherty and Parker were smart enough to play along with your little stunt, but if you’d gone with them, they’d have filled you in while the three of you waited for me to sneak off. Blackjack pulled them in on this.”

  “How did he—?”

  Charlie’s condescending glare and crossed arms stopped Esper short.

  “Right. Carl. OK, then, where to?”

  “Hey girls,” Doherty said. Esper flinched, not having heard him approaching. “Let’s go get you back to that crazy wizard friend of yours.” Doherty’s partner, Parker, emerged beside him.

  “And move your tails,” Parker said. “That delay cost us time. We want to get to your ship before dark.”

  # # #

  The crowd had swelled, leaving the little chasm kingdom completely unproductive as work was set aside in favor of sating curiosity. It wasn’t every day that someone as important and interesting as Carl showed up in their midst. These people, most of them enlisted or petty officers, just seemed starved for any excitement in their lives that wasn’t directly related to pure survival terror. Everything on this moon was trying to eat them; they were reduced to Iron Age tech; and a sizable contingent of their fellow survivors had fallen under the sway of a local god who didn’t like having non-worshipers around.

  So when one of his escorts opened the door to Lieutenant Kwon’s hut and gestured him inside, Carl demurred. “Ah, I think I’ll stay out here.”

  “The lieutenant doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” the man with the spear said. After shooing away Parker and Doherty, he hadn’t caught the name of his new keeper.

  But Carl stepped aside, putting his back to the hut and addressing the crowd. He raised his voice to carry to the back of the crowd, which fell silent as he spoke. “I’ve got a lot to say, and it concerns each and every one of you. This isn’t a matter for closed doors and secrets. I’d like to have my discussion with Sephiera Kwon right here, in front of everyone.”

  Voices shouted of encouragement, vying with a smaller number that dissented. But it wasn’t about convincing everyone, it was enough to sway a majority. Unfortunately, Carl hadn’t managed to win over all the men with the spears. One of them grabbed him by the shirt collar, heedless of the sweat-soaked fabric, and dragged him toward the door.

  “Release that hold, sailor,” Carl snapped. “That’s an order.” It was a tone of voice he rarely used even when he’d been on active duty. But it had a hardwired line to an enlisted man’s brain. The spear-wielder let go of him instantly, possibly before consciously registering the choice.

  Carl raised his voice. “I imagine by now, you’ve heard the story of what happened at the Battle of Karthix.” A murmur in the crowd caused him to twist around, and he saw Sephiera Kwon exit her quarters with a scowl of fury.

  “Ramsey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. The years of savage lunar administration hadn’t been kind. The Sephiera he’d known had been a sweet thing, soft and curvaceous, with a hint of smile always ready on her lips. This version has been stripped down to the muscle and bone, the smile replaced by a knit brow that appeared chronic. “Everyone, get back to work. Troy doesn’t function without everyone doing their part.”

  Troy? Carl set aside questions about the name for a later discussion. “Hold on! Everyone stay put. This is important. I’m declaring this a holiday.”

  “The hell you are! You’ve got no authority here, Ramsey.” Kwon stalked up and glared at him from half a pace away. “I’m in charge here, and you’re a civilian.”

  “Last I checked, Lieutenant Commanders outrank Second Lieutenants,” Carl replied, slouching with an easy half-grin in the face of Kwon’s barely contained rage.

  “You retired,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “You died,” he replied with a slight shrug. He raised his voice. “All of you died, as far as Earth Navy is concerned. I was there at the inquest. It was my scanner data that got entered into the official record of your disappearance. If we’re looking to get all technical here, you guys can all file reinstatement requests at the same time I re-enlist. Either way, I’m as Earth Navy as any of you, and I sure as shit outrank you, Lieutenant Kwon.”

  “They tell me you came f
rom the marines’ city,” Kwon said, shifting tactics on him. “That they have your crew hostage and sent you to kill me.”

  “Um, I told your sentries that,” Carl replied, keeping his voice loud enough for all to hear. Kwon was just one voice in the crowd. Convincing her wasn’t half as important as winning over the rest of them. “You may take note: the best assassins don’t forewarn their targets. I bullshitted my way out of that marine freak-fest, and I got them to let slip how that alien city is suppressing magic.”

  “How do we know they didn’t get to you?” Kwon asked. “This is a perfect ruse. You might not even be the real Carl Ramsey.”

  A wicked grin answered her. “Oh, you want juicy details? Stuff I know that Azrael and his brawny cultists couldn’t possibly? Well, you see everyone, when Sephiera here is—”

  Kwon’s face went momentarily slack, her eyes wide. “No. No. No. That won’t be necessary.” She drew a shuddering breath and composed herself. “This is my command. I’ve kept these people alive for six years and counting.”

  “Won’t make it seven,” Carl said.

  “What?” Kwon exclaimed. A tumult rose in the crowd as well, as Carl’s dire prediction stirred unwelcome doubt. “Seize him!”

  Carl held up his hands. “Power down main thrusters, Lieutenant. That’s an order. What I mean is, I’m ending this little exile of yours. You kept everyone alive six years. Great. For what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘for what’? To keep them alive.” Kwon was clearly stumbling under Carl’s emotional assault.

  “Until…” Carl prompted, making a paddling motion with one hand.

  Kwon snorted. “To make a life here. We gave up on rescue a long time ago.”

  Carl spread his arms.

  Kwon inclined her head and glared from beneath that plastered-on frown. “You.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Listen up!” Carl shouted from the bottoms of his toes. “Let’s give a round of applause for Lieutenant Sephiera Kwon. She’s kept everyone alive against incredible odds in a hostile environment. Now it’s time for her to take a well-earned break from command. I’m giving her two weeks R&R before taking on an administrative role. Pretty soon, my special ops team is going to have tech restored to normal, so let’s all just buckle down and keep it together until they do.”

  “You can’t just—” Kwon said.

  Carl clapped his hands once. “I’m going to need temporary quarters here in the chasm. Lieutenant Kwon is welcome to keep the commander’s quarters for the time being, in recognition of her years of meritorious service.” He searched the crowd for familiar faces. He spotted Chief Fadin standing near the back and rose to his toes to point him out. “Miles, get over here. You’re my acting chief of staff.” Miles Fadin had been one of the Typhoon simulator programmers. Carl had worked with him extensively on training scenarios for the Half-Devils. He also noticed Mari-Lou Kowalski, one of the hangar mechanics. “Kowalski, I want a briefing in two hours on personnel readiness and transportable materiel. We’re packing up and moving to the Odysseus once science is back to normal.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Kowalski replied, grinning as she saluted.

  Chief Fadin fell into step behind Carl as he made his way through the camp. He had come in like an avalanche, and he was going to be swept away by it if he wasn’t able to deliver.

  # # #

  Esper sat at the kitchen table beside Charlie, filling in the details of their escape and Carl’s plan. Mort sat across from them, looking haggard, with bags under glassy eyes and a hangdog expression—she had never seen him look so worn down. He eyed the two naval sentries sitting on the common room couch. Their spears rested against the wall by the door, and the two men looked lost and helpless without them. Or it could just have been that they were unaccustomed to wizardly scrutiny. It had taken Esper a fair while to get over that feeling of Mort peeling away layers of her mind when he looked at her like that.

  “And Carl sent these two shish kebab salesmen for what? To hunt us a late dinner?” Mort asked.

  Parker put a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “We barely made it here before dark. We’re indoors for the night. Might want to block off that opening to the outside, while we’re at it.”

  “And what?” Mort asked. “Suffocate? Little enough fresh air in here as it is.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Doherty said, gazing around the room. “Smells… like recycled air.”

  Roddy walked in from his quarters, popping the top on a can of beer. There was no telltale hiss of escaping pressure—another weird casualty of science being off kilter. “We’ve been running it most of the day. So far, so good, keeping this place from getting moldy. But Merlin over here’s on break, so we’re back to Paleolithic.”

  The two sentries exchanged a questioning look. “You had life support running?” Doherty asked. “Honest-to-God, twenty-sixth century filtered air?”

  “Holy shit,” Parker muttered. “We’re gonna have to pay off Ramsey.”

  Roddy burst into simian laughter. It was easy to think of him as a fuzzy little human most of the time, even when he used his feet as hands. “You bet with Carl? Oh God, what’re we on the hook for if he loses? Don’t tell me I’m patching this bird up just in time for him to lose it in a poker game.”

  “He bet us he could get tech working here,” Parker said. “Looks like we’re going to be working for him, after all.”

  Doherty leaned back on the couch and looked through the overhead dome. “Worse guys to work for. I’ll take creature comforts and a fighter-pilot boss over working in the jungle for anyone.”

  Roddy raised his beer. “Gotta hand it to you guys. I wouldn’t’ve held out for six years.” He hung his head. “Six fucking years…”

  Doherty jerked his head toward Roddy’s beer. “Hey, got another of those? It’s been forever.”

  “Make it two, if you’ve got ‘em,” Parker added.

  Roddy gave them a shrewd look and leaned over toward Mort. “What’re the odds we can bust up that obelisk that’s keeping my ship grounded?”

  Slumping over the table, Mort rubbed his face with both hands. “Normal circumstances, probably just march in there and have it down, pronto. Now…”

  “What’s the problem?” Esper asked.

  “Mr. Got-The-Universe-By-The-Balls is having a confidence crisis,” Roddy said. “He’s been fighting for science two days running now, and… how’d you put it?”

  “No, I get it,” Esper said. “You warned me that I had to pick a way to interact with the universe and stick with it, otherwise it would never take me seriously.”

  “What about you?” Charlie asked.

  “Me?” Esper replied. This was taking another of those unexpected twists where people heard ‘wizard’ and conflated her and Mort into one homogeneous group. There was a marked difference between ‘apprentice wizard’ and ‘terrifying renegade wizard’ that got overlooked far too often.

  “Think you can knock down an obelisk?” Charlie asked. Esper studied her face and could see no evidence of humor.

  Esper spluttered and scoffed. “No. Not in a million years. I mean, I might be able to break clay bricks like in Mountain Dojo Attack—”

  Roddy perked up. “You watched that with us?”

  Esper ignored him and continued on. “…but a building? I’ll leave that sort of thing to Mort.”

  “Wouldn’t need to destroy the whole thing,” Mort mumbled, not looking at anyone. “Damage… probably a focal point somewhere. Near the peak, I’d imagine. That’s where I’d put it, if I was an alien wizard designing a city that wanted to alter science.”

  “You’ve… given this a lot of thought?” Charlie asked.

  “These past ten minutes since you mentioned it… little else,” he replied.

  “Hey, we got a blaster working,” Roddy said.

  Parker waved a hand for attention, like a classroom student, but bare-chested and tanned. “Blaster won’t do much to stone,” he said. “If you had
a while to go at it, maybe, but my guess is even if you sneak past those marines, they’ll find you before long.”

  Esper sighed. “That’s a whole other problem. We need to not only find this obelisk, we need to get past a city of marines who won’t like us vandalizing their god’s property.”

  Doherty stood. “Well, jungle’s too dangerous at night. Maybe we give it some think-time overnight, come up with a plan in the morning.”

  Roddy finished his beer with a gasp, oblivious to the wanton looks both Odysseus survivors gave him. “Or Esper can get the Squall flying, same as Mort’s been doing with the Mobius. Bring our last disintegrator rifle along, do the job, and fly back. If everyone’s so fucking terrified of the dark on this moon, no one ought to be expecting her.”

  “I see a few flaws in that plan,” Esper said. “First off, I can’t fly a Squall. Plus, ever since Mort started teaching me magic, datapads are getting harder to figure out. I’m not sure I should be—”

  “I’ll fly it,” Charlie said. “If Blackjack can pick it up on the first try, I think I can manage a ferry-service run.”

  “Well, that leads to my second problem,” Esper said. “I don’t know if I can make science hold still around a whole Squall. And even if I can, I don’t know for how long.”

  “I have every confidence in you,” Mort said with a weary, yet reassuring smile.

  Esper sighed. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one whose life I’d be risking.”

  “Let’s do it,” Charlie said. “Where’s that disintegrator rifle?”

  “Well, that was the third problem. We got rid of all those nasty things.” In fact, she distinctly remembered Carl mentioning… Poo. She’d fallen for it again. “You kept them, didn’t you?

  “Tanny kept one back,” Roddy said with a grin. “It’s under her bunk. We figured you wouldn’t mind if you didn’t know.”

  She felt like such a fool. Of course they had told her that. She had still been new to the ship and hadn’t quite caught onto the fact that Carl would lie about the time of day if it got him a beer five minutes before the bar opened. “That still doesn’t answer the biggest problem,” she said. It was her last chance to derail this crazy plan in the hopes of replacing it with one that didn’t hinge on her. “The Squall is in the cargo bay, and the Mobius is smooshed against the ground.”