Back into the fire, p.33
Back Into the Fire, page 33
“You will have our full commitment, of course,” he told Rhoades.
“Convenient selection of words, Admiral.” The Council officer’s smile was the baring of poison-dipped fangs. “And when you read your orders, you’ll see this, but know that if we deem the reinforcement effort must be aborted, due to resistance from the surface, or the Navy’s inability to protect our transports I have the latitude to make an especial request.”
“Oh?”
“You will bombard Fury from space. You will reduce the planet by any means necessary.”
Harrison didn’t answer for a very long time. Fury was sparsely-populated, by galactic standards, maybe a little over a million souls, mostly in hiding from the fighting. It’d had little in the way of a central government, had mostly been controlled, first by a hopelessly corrupt Alliance satrap, then by an “emergency” Union Governor, when it declared for secession. But the scale of such carnage would be—well not unimaginable, unfortunately—but vast.
“I have the orders,” Rhoades repeated.
“I understand. I also know that the last commander to oversee such an escalation was brought up on war crimes charges.” And that bastard, Geiger, a foaming lunatic who would’ve gotten along just fine with this thug in the hologram, had been cashiered—but more because he’d exceeded his mandate than out of any moral consideration.
“As I said,” Rhoades went on, slowly, calculatingly, “the orders have been authenticated and fully-approved at the highest levels.”
“I understand,” Harrison repeated. He regarded the hateful creature in the hologram a moment longer before giving himself an inward shake. “Very well, Colonel. You will have the Navy’s full cooperation. And I’m certain we’ll have no need of such decisive measures.”
“Glad to hear it, Admiral.”
Harrison killed the transmission with haste the other man no doubt noticed.
The ready room spun for a moment around him. A deep breath settled it, but not the roiling of his stomach from disgust and dismay. The order was disturbing, of course, but lost some of its bite in the hard truth that if Harrison couldn’t bring the transports through Union resistance to Fury, he sure as hell wasn’t going to be allowed to just sit in orbit and pound the planet. They had to win the fight for the system or neither course was going to happen!
These fools, high up in their space-elevator offices over Nova Terra or some other posh Foundation World, thinking up this nonsense...
No, what truly chilled his guts was the spread of the Guard’s influence, and with it, the perfidy of the High Council, itself.
One didn’t become an Alliance Fleet Admiral without being aware of politics, but Harrison started to wonder if the politics had grown toxic beyond even his tolerance.
KIA SHIVERED EVEN THOUGH she wasn’t cold. She couldn’t stop.
That jolt from the neural dampener the medic had hit her with had dulled the pain, the endless itching pain and the roaring headache. She’d gotten comfortable enough to let the others coax her out of scorched armor, to apply bandages to blackened skin that couldn’t possibly be hers, to ease her down into a cot. But it was all seeping back, accompanied by a weird fog of disorientation.
She welcomed the latter. All around her was nightmare.
The marines were improvising a hospital area out of the empty hold of one of the transports from the far north side of the aerodrome, where little fighting had happened and the mass of the mountainside had shielded it from the fusion blast. The ship got them out of the open, at least, but crammed full of wounded marines, it stank—God, it stank. And the air rang with misery, with moaning and pleas for help and well-meant platitudes from medics who couldn’t possibly be enough to do enough.
Kia saw things in that crammed, poorly-lit space, things that mercifully had sheets drawn over them as, one-by-one, they ceased living. But they were still there, the shrouded figures, multiplying. And she couldn’t unsee what had been left of them, in their last moments.
She wondered if she’d be joining them soon.
That brought a convulsion. She didn’t vomit this time, thankfully. Her head swam, thoughts ricocheting off the insides of her skull until they caught in the mire of her pain and sank. She felt heavy. She thought she might be crying. That stopped as someone approached her. She tried to wipe her eyes, but she couldn’t lift her arms.
Josie, she thought wistfully. The image of her pierced like a ray of sunshine, as clear as anything she’d seen since a fusion blast scoured her world. It changed as she felt herself relax, sag back against the bulkhead where she’d been propped.
It became her in a tank top and fatigue shorts, running at her side, the pair of them on a ten-click route along the beaches of Caledonia, the sun like a golden kiss on their skins. That deployment had been a cakewalk, the marines brought in to quell local tensions and reassure the governor there’d be no more food riots while he figured out which of his Ministers of the Interior was hoarding supplies for off-world sale. Caledonia had been mostly sunshine and idle hours.
And lots of Josie.
And she was right there, suddenly, in front of Kia’s eyes in the terrible hold of that terrible transport on that terrible planet.
“How are you doing, baby?” she asked.
“Great,” Kia replied, except the word barely formed, came out a drooling grunt. She tried to smile through it, like it was nothing, but she felt more sputum dampen her chin and saw Josie hide an expression of anguish.
“Don’t talk,” Josie purred, notably didn’t look too hard at her, “don’t move, please.”
So glad you’re here, Kia thought, because she couldn’t make the words. She tried the smile again, wasn’t sure it worked. But Josie met her gaze, smiled back. So glad. That beach on Caledonia filled her thoughts again, seemed all around.
Kia had had a chance to tell her how she felt then. It would’ve been all kinds of tangled, sister officers and in the same chain of command. But she’d felt ready. And Kia, damn, she was so beautiful as they paused their run to just look out at the Caledonian sea, blues and greens and sun-speckle gold. They’d been pushing it and Josie had been breathing hard, shimmering with sweat, drawn-back hair darkened with it. She’d been so alive. They’d both been.
“Is there anyone to help?” Josie was asking someone.
A deep-voiced answer caused her to wince and Kia’s thoughts to stumble back into the present. The dark shape looming at Josie’s back solidified into Jerry Rodann. And Kia couldn’t help a grimace.
It’d been the same that late afternoon on Caledonia.
She’d reached for Josie’s hand, had screwed up her courage at last. They’d had tumbles together. Josie was no prude and made no secret of her bisexuality. It wouldn’t likely have surprised her.
But Josie had shouted to someone, stepped away. Shouts became laughter and greetings as she harangued a pack of local men playing a variant of volleyball into allowing her to join. They’d been all grins and young physiques and foolishly eager to let the hard-bodied off-world woman—who could’ve snapped any of them in two—join their party...and perhaps more, their eyes said. And Josie had been willing, Kia knew.
Her courage had failed her.
“See if you can find someone,” Josie was insisted to Rodann. “Hit somebody and drag them here, if you have to, Jerry!”
Kia chuckled at her. It hurt.
Rodann stepped out of her blurring sight.
“Now, honey,” Josie whispered. “It’s like I said; don’t make a sound. I can’t stay long, but I’ll see if we can get you some better help.” Gingerly, she put a hand on her arm, squeezed. “I’m going back out there. They’re already planning it. I’m going to go and get something to fix you up. Going to take it from the Alliance!”
Kia smiled at her. It seemed all she could count on her body to do. She hated that Josie come to her when she was like this, that this was the moment she had left to tell her. She tried to look around, make certain Rodann was out of earshot. It wasn’t the big guy’s fault. It was no one’s fault. And Kia was glad he’d be around for Josie, glad he seemed to make her happy.
But...
It was always you. The words didn’t form, even though they glistened bright as lightning in her head, bright as fresh tears. She tried to force them out. Should have told you, long ago. You were the one I wanted. Always. Nothing came. She struggled with herself, despised the weakness of her ravaged flesh.
“Baby, stop.” Josie set a hand upon her chest. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
She was already hurting. Didn’t matter. She had to force it out, even it emerged in a slobbering, incoherent mess. “I...love you.”
And there it was.
Josie smiled and it was like that Caledonian sun sinking in red glory towards the seas, after the volleyball game ended and it was just the two of them, weary but alone, side-by-side on their butts in the sand.
“Love you, too.”
Kia let the tension flood from her, relaxed back against the bulkhead, into the sheets the medics had flung over her. It didn’t matter that she was just telling her that to calm her, or even because she did mean it—just not the way Kia meant it.
She’d said it.
That Caledonian sun could set now
THE RAIDERS HAD IMPROVISED a prison cell out of what looked like it’d once been—during the Hole’s time as an actual mine—a storage cave, from the rusting carts still crowding one side. They’d erected a force field with portable generators that popped and hissed to either side of the entryway. The field created a faint blur in the air, like looking up through water.
Kelly felt like she was drowning in that water.
It is him, she wailed inwardly. It is. Buck...
“Damn,” Tim said from her side, watching her as she stared in. “I was right.” She heard him gulp. “I’m sorry, hon.”
She shook her head, couldn’t find words, wasn’t even sure she could find the next breath. Buck. Her younger brother looked the same, despite burnt, disheveled flight suit, first-aid bio spray on burns, and the shadows of sleeplessness under his eyes. She’d been there for his graduation from the Academy, right before shipping back out for Gallaton—when it all really began. God, he’d seemed like just a boy.
No boy, anymore, she knew. Tim had told her of the kill marks on his wrecked fighter. With a jolt, she realized she’d faced Buck in orbit, over the planet. That cold-blooded ace. The jolt curdled, became queasiness. My God, how many of us has he killed?
She already knew of one.
“He can’t see you,” Tim was saying. “The field’s been polarized.”
“I want to go in there,” she said abruptly.
Tim glanced at the Raiders, hovering off to one side. “I don’t know that that’s really a good idea.”
“You were going to interrogate him, weren’t you?”
“I was going to wait for someone who knows that kind of business,” Tim replied and looked again at the Raiders, at the sergeant who appeared to be in charge of the detachment. “You’ve got someone on their way, right?”
The sergeant cringed a little. “Honestly, Commander, everything’s so screwed up right now, what with the attack. I was kind of hoping you’d know what more to do.”
“See?” Kelly said with forced decisiveness. “Your call. And really, then, it’s mine.”
Tim snorted. “Pulling rank, now?”
“I sure as hell am.” She reached for the force field control.
Tim caught her hand. “Are you sure?”
She looked back at him. “Hell no. But that’s my brother in there, Tim. I’m not leaving him to the tender mercies of a Raider rough-up” she half-turned “no offense, gang.”
“None taken,” the sergeant replied with a chuckle.
“I’m going in there,” she repeated.
“Then I’m going in with you.” Tim unholstered his blastpistol. “He already knows not to mess with me.”
Kelly paused and set a hand upon his chest. His synthe-leathers had fused over his shoulder and he smelled of burnt things and sickened sweat. “Maybe you ought to be seeing to yourself, instead?”
“Nah,” he replied with that ridiculous half-grin she loved.
She nearly collapsed against him in that moment, sobbed into his chest, ran from this all. She didn’t want to go in there—not really. The whole universe whirled around her into a slashing, shattering entropy. They were nothing in that. But Tim was here, unmovable.
“All right.” She wiped an eye and physically forced all emotion down deep, where it wouldn’t manifest itself on her expression. “Let’s do this.” She was more afraid of touching the projector control than of any fight she’d ever been in.
But she did it, anyway.
The force field fell away and Buck straightened his spine, held up his jaw in cocky, arrogant defiance. The flutter of his eyes—which he shared with her and their father—steadied. A crinkling at their corners betrayed confusion, but not yet recognition. But it came, suddenly, like an avalanche across his face, wiping away any coherent reaction, just blank shock. It didn’t last, though, a sudden flare of heat scalding it away. Rage.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he snarled. “This is such bullshit.”
“Buck...”
He burst out laughing. “Oh, that is rich. Calling me that, as if you couldn’t find that in any public database your criminal code-slicer pals hacked? God, lady, I hope you’ve got better tricks up your sleeve.”
Kelly glanced at Tim, then back at her brother. She almost didn’t recognize him now, with the hate contorting his features. “It’s all true, Buck. This is me.”
“Sure, ‘Kelly’” he made quotation marks in the air—awkwardly, as his wrists were zip-tied “or should I call you Cyndra Thell?”
Kelly frowned with momentary confusion. But it came back to her. The name had been a false identity, created by Syntar Fleet Corporation in their wide-spanning effort to cover up the atrocities in the Gallaton System. Thell was a fiction, created to excuse any reappearance of Kelly after she’d been cashiered quietly and shoved off into a Syntar hard-labor camp. Thell was supposed to have been an identity thief and forger, pretending to be Kelly.
Turned out, that had been one of the mega-corporation’s cleverer inventions.
“You see?” Buck cackled. “You Jester scum are about as good at interrogation you are at dogfighting!”
“Shot your ass down, pal,” Tim snapped from Kelly’s side.
“After outnumbering us eight-to-one?” Buck managed to clap his bound hands together, mockingly. “Bravo.” He turned his glower back on Kelly. “This slab of meat your boyfriend, Miss Thell?”
“Buck, you’re just making this harder.”
“Harder?” he snorted and stood up, grabbed his crotch. “How about I show you hard, baby?”
The vulgarity of it—and shocking irony—sent nausea barreling up Kelly’s throat. She swallowed once, tasted bile, had to look away from him. Tim chortled quietly and shook his head as he fingered his Street Special with just enough menace to keep Buck in the corner.
Rallying herself, Kelly decided on a new tactic. “Unless things have changed since we were kids, there’s not much to show there.”
He chortled with slight unease. “Now you’re getting into the spirit of things.”
“Do you still have that weird birth mark?” she asked him. “Or did you get it fixed? You know, the one to the left of your” she smirked “hardness?”
She could see the unease of before deepening as his eyes darted towards Tim, then back to her. “Again, bravo,” he replied in a more quiet, dangerous voice. “And, again, you’re not as good at this as you think. That’s also information any of your slicer friends could have filched out of a Navy personnel holonetwork. And we know you Jesters, in particular, have been keeping tabs on my family.”
Kelly didn’t know anything about that—probably lies fed to him by Naval Intelligence or the AIB, or even their father. “And don’t you wonder why that is, Buck?”
“Stop calling me that!” he snarled.
“The Admiral lied to you,” she told him. She paused for a grim chuckle. “‘The Admiral’...you ever wonder why he even made his kids, even his own wife call him that?”
“Because he is the Admiral,” Buck replied with a trembling voice. He quelled the moment of fury quickly. “Not that filthy criminals like yourselves would understand things like service and honor. You may have fallen in with the Union Fleet, all official-like, but you’re still just a pack of murdering terrorists.”
“It’s because,” Kelly spoke over the end of his ranting, “the Fleet meant more to him than family or love” she paused to fully fix him in her glare “or the truth.”
Trembling a little, Buck replied, “The Fleet defends those things. Giving oneself to it is the highest form of service to them.”
“‘Honor and the Alliance’,” Kelly quoted the Navy credo bitterly. “Right?”
The unease clouded Buck’s gaze again. “That’s right. Not that you’d know.”
“Our father lied to us,” Kelly repeated. “He lied to you. About me.”
“I’ve heard this story, lady.”
“I’m sure you have,” she snapped back, “but let me fill in a few blanks. The ‘Battle’ of Gallaton was nothing more than a massacre. Admiral Geiger, who was secretly on the payroll of Syntar Fleet Corporation, opened fire on an unarmed fleet of refugees trying to flee the system. A couple of us refused the order and were thrown in the brig for it.”
Buck shrugged and looked away, feigning disinterest.
“The Jesters were the only thing that kept the Fleet—your Fleet, our Fleet—from finishing the butchery,” she went on. “And they were the ones who rescued me and thousands of Gallatonians from a Syntar concentration camp set up after the planet fell and was kept under quarantine by the Fleet. On behalf of Syntar.”
“This is a great story,” Buck drawled. “And a convenient one. Geiger lost his mind, and is dead, anyway. And Syntar was broken up for their criminal behaviors and partially nationalized. So, you anchor this tripe on two well-known and obvious villains.”
