Release point drop troop.., p.15
Release Point (Drop Trooper Book 8), page 15
Vicky tilted an eyebrow at me, mouth opening slightly like she couldn’t believe I’d actually said that.
“Is this table only for officers,” Top asked, “or can a lowly NCO join you?”
I was about halfway out of my seat before I stopped myself. How the hell did she manage to sneak up on us?
“Sure, Top,” Vicky said, waving at the chair across from her. “Have a seat.”
Top looked haggard, exhausted, and I wondered how much convincing the Marines had taken to not panic. Vicky and I had been prepared to jump into a planning meeting after the Transition, but Hachette had snapped shut any suggestion of it by Nance or me and told everyone not on shift to go back to their compartment and get some sleep while he did some thinking. We hadn’t done much sleeping, just lay next to each other in the dark for a few hours, too stunned to even talk, until hunger had driven us out. It had probably been just as well, because I was sure there’d been a lot of drama among the ship’s crew and I could barely keep my own shit together.
Top had brought a tray with her and she didn’t say a word for a couple minutes, eating quickly and methodically, as if she were attriting the food’s ability to make war with her.
“Colonel Hachette would like to see you two in his quarters after dinner,” she said, once the rice and beans had been reduced to a third of its original size.
“Just us?” Vicky wondered.
“No. I’ll be there, along with Captain Nance, Captain Solano, and Gunny Pineda. This is supposed to be a planning session, or so I’ve been told.”
“Why has he taken so long to have a planning session?” I asked her. “We should have done this the minute we jumped.”
The muscles beside Top’s eyes tensed, and if I hadn’t known her, I would have thought it was a sign she was getting angry. But I did know her and I was sure it was the result of her trying not to roll her eyes.
“We should have,” she agreed. “However, the colonel took the time to bring in computer technicians and an Engineering tech to…harden his private quarters against intrusion by our new guest.” She shrugged. “He wants to be able to plan without Dwight listening in.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I allowed. “He doesn’t trust the thing to tell the truth and God knows, I don’t either.”
“Why would this thing bother to hitch a ride with us,” Dunstan wondered, “just to lie to us? It could have just let us just die when those Skrela things attacked.”
“I’ll be sure to bring that up when I talk to the colonel,” Top said, scowling at the man.
“What happens,” Vicky asked, her voice soft and subdued, eyes on the table, “if we’re really stuck out here? If we can’t get back?”
I covered her hand with mine, squeezing.
“We’re going to find a way back.” I didn’t make it a promise because I had no idea if it was even possible.
“And what if we don’t?”
She speared me with a glare, daring me to answer, and I couldn’t.
“Top,” I said, slow and hesitant, not liking how this was going to sound and liking even less what her response might be, “this is a really…unusual situation. Not something any of us trained for. Do you think Colonel Hachette is up for it?”
She didn’t explode, which was a good start. I don’t know if it was because of our rank or her experience with us in the war, but a deep frown was the only clue that the question upset her.
“I don’t know that any of us are up for this, Alvarez. But Colonel Hachette is a superb officer, and I have to believe he’s going to react as well as any of us could under the circumstances.” Her smile was wan, but not hopeless. “Would I rather have Captain Covington here, in charge? Of course. But he’s what we got. I’ll tell you what, though.” She raised a single finger. “I’ll promise you this. One thing. If, at any point, I see the colonel fucking up, and he won’t take my advice to change his mind, I will let you know.”
Top leaned forward, fingers interlaced in front of her on the table.
“I hope to God it doesn’t come to that, children. Because as bad as things seem now, having to try to deal with a bad CO right in the middle of it all would make it a million times worse.”
“Shut the door, Alvarez,” Hachette snapped.
“Yes, sir.” I squeezed in behind Vicky and pushed the hatch closed behind me.
Hachette’s private berthing on the Orion was large compared to everyone else’s quarters, but this was still a starship, and not a cruiser. It was small enough that the seven of us were about all that could comfortably fit into the compartment, and even that was stretching the definition of “comfortably” past its limits.
Vicky and I were last to arrive, despite getting there fifteen minutes before the announced time. I suppose that was a testament to how little else there was to do, or maybe how little everyone cared about anything else right now. It sucked, because that meant there was nowhere left to sit. Hachette was already taking the edge of his bunk, Nance had the chair by the work desk, and Solano had grabbed the emergency fold-down acceleration couch on the bulkhead, which left Sgt.-Major Campbell, Solano’s Top Kick Gunny Pineda, and the two of us to stand.
I fought an urge to stand at ease and deliberately leaned against the hatch, letting Vicky lean into my shoulder. I thought I caught a hint of irritation in Hachette’s eyes, but it might have just been general displeasure with the situation. I didn’t care either way. If he didn’t want me leaning against the wall, he should have made sure there were enough chairs.
“Now that we’re all here,” Hachette went on, “I’m going to give everyone a run-down of our situation as best as we can tell.” He closed his eyes as if he was trying to remember the details, then gave up and grabbed a folding tablet off his bunk and read from its display. “The senior Helm officer had another go at determining where we were before we Transitioned, the system with the red giant. The navigational programs weren’t able to zero in on a particular star system due to how dim the giant would be from Earth, or anywhere in Commonwealth space, but we’ve managed to narrow it down to the Perseus Arm of the galaxy, somewhere on the order of 7,000 light-years from Earth.”
“Shit.” It wasn’t me who said it, that was all I knew. I think it might have been Pineda. The man was a good Marine, but he was also a career NCO, and swearing came like breathing to him, no matter what the company.
Hachette didn’t bawl him out, just nodded agreement.
“Quite. Even if we knew the correct route to take, the Transition Lines that would get us back, it would take us decades to get back using our drive. Dwight….” He spat the name out. “…at least isn’t lying about that. We need Predecessor technology to get back. Assuming he’s telling the truth about being a creation of the Predecessors.”
“I don’t know if he’s telling the truth,” I put in, “but I’ve fought the Skrela more than once now and I can tell you, sir, whatever manufactured those things did not create anything that could understand humans well enough to talk to them.”
“That doesn’t mean that it was the Predecessors,” Solano argued, though it seemed as if he was just doing it pro forma.
“No,” I admitted, “but if it’s not the Skrela, and it’s not the Predecessors, then we have to postulate a third non-human species that had the technology to build that gate thing that took us here.”
“Occam’s razor,” Captain Nance agreed. He spread his hands in an encompassing gesture. “Everything we’ve seen so far agrees with what this AI has told us. Until we receive data that contradicts that, the simplest and safest assumption is that he’s told us the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but at least some of it.”
Hachette grunted noncommittally.
“Perhaps. Moving on, the Transition Line we’re traversing currently is going to take us to a system with a single G-class star. We don’t know much more than that at this distance, just what the gravimetic sensors can tell us.”
“G-class might mean habitables,” Nance pointed out. “Not a sure thing, but it’s been that way in the Cluster.”
“Of course,” Vicky cut in, “it was probably that way in the Cluster because the Predecessors engineered those habitables.”
“Oh, come on, Sandoval,” Solano sneered. “Don’t tell me you believe that conspiracy-theory bullshit.”
The hackles rose on my neck and I was about to tell Solano exactly where he could stick his opinion, but Vicky beat me to it.
“Really?” she snapped, pushing away from me and standing up straight. “Really, Solano? We’re in another fucking galactic cluster seven thousand light-years from home, because a sentient computer sent us here using its tame black hole, and the only reason we wound up in this shit is that we were trying to stop a rogue Tahni general from setting loose ancient alien clone monsters and destroying our civilization. What fucking part of this do you think isn’t conspiracy-theory bullshit?”
“Enough,” Hachette barked. “Whether or not the Predecessors terraformed the habitable worlds in the Cluster, we can’t say for sure that there will be habitables where we’re going. If the Predecessors did get chased out of the Cluster by the Skrela, then they might have done the same thing out here. But if they built the Cluster to keep us inside and keep the Skrela out, then there may be things out here we’ve never dealt with.”
I nodded, almost reluctantly. It was a good point.
“We also have the AI. Dwight.” Hachette rubbed at his temples, eyes pressed shut. “Which was also the name of the kid who bullied me in elementary school for three years, coincidentally enough. He says he tagged along because he feels responsible for us, because we’re the first sentients he’s tossed out of the Garden of Eden, and he didn’t want the snakes getting us. I’m not sure I buy that. I mean, his motives for downloading a copy of himself may not be malevolent, but I’m not convinced they’re altruistic either.”
“It,” Top corrected him. At Hachette’s confused expression, she clarified. “You’re calling the thing ‘he’ and ‘him.’ Dwight is an ‘it.’ Let’s not anthropomorphize a computer that wasn’t even programmed by humans.”
“Nice catch, Sergeant-Major,” he acknowledged. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs. “That’s the external forces working on us. Let’s talk about what we bring to the table. We have one reinforced company of Drop-Troopers, a platoon of Force Recon, two Intercept cutters, four assault shuttles, three drop-ships, and six landers. The Orion has a full load of metallic hydrogen reactor slugs except for what we burned on this last operation, which should last us a while as long as we don’t get into any more running battles with the Skrela. We’re Winchester on missiles, but we have enough Gatling laser ammo to start a war.” He sighed, as if running into a fact that derailed his thoughts. “We have enough food stores for approximately four hundred days without resupply. That’s soy paste and spirulina powder. There are emergency rations as well, which could stretch that out for another two hundred days, though God knows, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Water won’t be a problem for a long time, with the recyclers.” He scanned the compartment, meeting each of our eyes. “Am I forgetting anything?”
“We have spare parts and patching materials for the repair ‘bots,” Nance put in. “Enough to keep us spaceworthy for a long time, if it comes to that.”
“That’s our situation,” I said, putting it into terms I understood, an op order. “But what’s our mission?”
“Stay alive,” Solano said, chuckling humorlessly.
“No.” I cut him off harshly, earning a dirty look. “Any idiot can survive. We’re not just stranded colonists. We’re Marines.” I shrugged, motioning at Nance and Hachette. “And Fleet, of course. We’re not here to just survive.”
“As of now,” Hachette declared, “our mission is to try to get back. There are people on this ship who have wives, children. And we all have a duty to the Commonwealth and the military to try to return and report. We have to find a way to get back.”
“And as far as we know,” I cut in, “there’s only one way to get back.”
Six pairs of curious eyes stared at me and I shrugged as if it was obvious.
“We have to find the Predecessors.”
15
“That is a Predecessor?” Colonel Hachette blurted, goggling at the projection in the conference room holotank.
The thing was tall, depicted next to a stylized human for scale, two meters tall or maybe a hair more. Its knees were bent backwards like a kangaroo’s, digitigrade I think the term is, its feet long and split-toed. A narrow waist expanded into a deep chest, twice as large as a human’s, with shoulders set far back from the ribs. The arms were long and bony, the fingers strangely agile, reminding me of a pianist. But the head…that was the real difference. The face extruded from a long and bulbous skull, the nostrils flat above a too-wide mouth lined with pointed teeth. I couldn’t see the ears because they were hidden behind a swept-back mane of what could have been hair but what I sensed were more akin to feathers.
The clothes were tight sleeves, encasing forearms, upper chest, groin, and thighs, colored a slightly darker grey than the skin. From appearances alone, it was impossible to tell how they went on and off. Something that looked like a cross between a bandolier and a vest went from left shoulder to right hip, lined with pouches.
“This is what was in my memory banks,” Dwight told us. Its tone and cadence were becoming more casual the more it talked to us, as if it needed the practice. “I have no reason to doubt it, though I understand you might, Colonel Hachette.”
“You said they evolved on Earth,” Vicky mused, walking around the table, looking at the image from every angle. “I was thinking you meant like Neanderthals, or some other hominid that somehow developed a civilization we hadn’t detected.”
“That wouldn’t be too likely,” Captain Nance said with more confidence than I would have felt. “Neanderthals disappeared recently, on the geological scale. If any of them had developed a technological civilization, we would have found traces of it.”
“Are you an amateur anthropologist, Captain?” I asked him, hiding a grin. I was constantly amused by the unexpected hobbies senior officers had the time to pursue. Top had told me that Hachette was an accomplished sculptor, and when I’d stared at her dubiously, she’d shown me pictures of some of his work.
“Not quite that,” Nance replied, waving it off. “I just dabble.”
“You’re quite right, Captain,” Dwight assured him. “No other hominid species would have been able to develop a spacefaring civilization without your species discovering it.”
I frowned, my brows knitting.
“What’s wrong?” Vicky asked, apparently noticing my expression.
“It’s starting to bug me having a conversation with the damned bulkhead,” I admitted.
“Is this better, Captain Alvarez?” Dwight asked. Only this time, it wasn’t a disembodied voice speaking; it was a hologram standing beside the notional Predecessor in the projection tank. It was a man, a human male, dressed in a Commonwealth Space Fleet uniform, his brown hair cut to regulation, his face bland and unremarkable.
“No!” I exclaimed, half startled by the sudden appearance of the image, half annoyed. “If you’re calling yourself Dwight and appearing as a human male, why do you insist on using that voice?”
“It was a voice I knew all of you would be accustomed to hearing, since it is the default setting for your computer learning programs.” The bland-looking Fleet tech cocked his head to the side. “Would you rather I chose a female form?”
“I’d rather you chose another voice.”
“Is this pertinent?” Hachette ground out.
“As I was saying,” Dwight continued, now with a male voice.
I recognized this one too. It was the one the Fleet used to warn recruits at the in-processing station that they weren’t allowed to use the staff lounge, the same one that I heard at the Fleet Headquarters station at L5 when I got off the shuttle from Trans Angeles, telling me and all the others that our transport to Inferno would be leaving in thirty minutes and we could either be on it or face charges. I think I preferred the female voice.
“The Predecessors were not Neanderthals, nor were they descended from any hominid species.”
The shape of the Predecessor morphed into something else, something I’d only seen in my high school classes and barely remembered even then. The feathers were still there. It was bipedal, but it didn’t stand upright, using a long tail for balance. Its legs were digitigrade like the Predecessor, but they were more muscular, the arms shorter and less useful. The head still protruded out from the back of the snout, but those sharpened teeth had once been daggers.
It was a dinosaur.
“I don’t recognize this species.” Nance alone was unfazed by the revelation, peering intently at the image.
“You wouldn’t,” Dwight confirmed. “It lived very close to the asteroid impact which you call the Chicxulub Event. Very few land species survived, and almost none of the dinosaurs. But this one did. And its ancestors, forged in the scrabble for survival following the extinction, developed intelligence. And technology.”
The dinosaur was replaced by an image of Earth, except the continents weren’t quite right. And where green should have been was, in too many places, brown and white. The picture soared through the dust-choked atmosphere and showed clusters of the bipedal dinosaurs digging tunnels beneath the earth, living in the burrows. Showed them using rocks as tools, chipping them together to sharpen them. Showed them making fire.
Their shape changed gradually along with the images around them. The sky cleared, the rain fell, grass grew again. And cities began to grow as aeons passed. Time sped up and cities of stone changed to cities of concrete and then of metal. Rockets launched and stations were built in orbit, spaceships heading out from Earth.
“What did they call themselves?” Vicky asked, transfixed by the footage in the holographic projection.
