Release point drop troop.., p.5
Release Point (Drop Trooper Book 8), page 5
“Was that ever funny?” Vicky asked him, yanking loose the quick-release for her safety straps.
“Oh, come on,” Dunstan said, floating down toward the airlock. “It’s always been funny.” He came up short against the inner lock, pushing the control to cycle the inner and outer doors, since both sides were under pressure. “By the way, Hachette and the sergeant-major want to see you on the bridge.”
“Me too?” Wade asked.
“No, just the officers.” Dunstan grinned. “Well, the responsible officers, not a flaky pilot like me.”
“You’re just upset because Hachette made you cut your hair,” Vicky said, squeezing past him to be the first out of the hatch.
“It’s a dirty shame.” Dunstan ran a hand over his regulation cut, centimeters shorter than it had been when he’d been a mercenary working for the Corporate Security Force. “All the girls in all the bars between here and the Pirate Worlds who’ll cry bitter tears when they see me with this haircut…”
“I don’t know if they cover complicated biological processes like this in Flight School,” I said, following Vicky through into the hangar bay, “but hair grows back. If you really want to look like a civilian, well…you know, I don’t think Hachette would turn you down if you asked for a discharge.”
“Oh, hell no, man!” Dunstan said, sounding outraged, his voice echoing through the docking umbilical. “This is the coolest shit I’ve had the chance to do in years! I mean, getting laid is fine and all, but man cannot live by bread alone, you get where I’m coming from?”
“I don’t even think we’re speaking the same language, Dunstan,” Vicky told him.
“I’ll see you guys after,” Wade said, waving as he headed down toward the crew quarters while Vicky and I turned toward the bridge. “I’m gonna get some sleep.”
And I envied him that, because I had a feeling it was going to be a while before I got the chance.
Hachette and Top were waiting for us on the bridge, and so was Karen Fargo, carrying an issue folding tablet and a stylus. I hadn’t expected to see her there, first of all because she wasn’t bridge crew, she was an enlisted Marine whose job it was to kill people and break shit, but second because she annoyed the hell out of Top.
“Hey, Cam, Vicky,” Fargo said, smiling broadly. Then she blinked as if coming awake. “Sorry, I meant, hello, Captain Alvarez, Captain Sandoval.” She giggled. “It’s taking a little time for me to get used to being back on active duty.” She motioned with the tablet. “Sgt.-Major Campbell has me working as her personal assistant. Isn’t that cool?”
“It was either that or try to make her a squad leader,” Top said, as close to a whine as I had ever heard coming from the woman.
Ellen Campbell had served in the old United States Marine Corps during the Sino-Russian War and the subsequent Collapse, enlisted in the Commonwealth Marines during the First War with the Tahni and stayed in through the Pirate Wars and the Second War, seen countless battles, unimaginable death and destruction. But all it had taken was a few weeks’ exposure to Karen Fargo to bring her to despair.
“I blame this on you, Alvarez,” Top informed me, arching an eyebrow. “And I will cut you, promotion or no.”
She was kidding. I hoped.
“That didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped,” Hachette told us, hands on his hips.
The man was a walking recruiting poster, square-jawed and clear-eyed, filling out his uniform jacket’s shoulders and chest through hours in the gym, and I didn’t know when the hell he found the time because I’d never seen him doing anything but work.
“I’d say it went as well as it was going to, given that our contact had no clue what was going on in the city and her informant was double-crossing us,” Vicky said, staring the tall man down without a hint of fear. “She got herself killed, but we got the intell you wanted.”
Fargo’s eyes went wide, though I wasn’t sure if it was because she’d found out someone had died or because she couldn’t believe Vicky would talk to Colonel Hachette that way. It might have been the latter because I thought I saw a few sideways glances from the bridge crew.
“Maybe,” I amended. At Vicky’s raised eyebrow, I shrugged. “We don’t know that this guy Ven-Wan was clued in to Zan-Thint’s plans. He was a street recruiter. He thought he was going to be in on the big apocalyptic battle when the Tahni saints come marching in, but that doesn’t mean he actually knew anything.”
“Well, aren’t you just the font of sunshine and happiness, Captain Alvarez?” Top sighed. She looked back to Hachette. “Unfortunately, he’s right. We can’t be sure.”
“Who can be sure of anything?” Hachette asked, staring at the star map with Fomor highlighted in red.
I resisted an urge to laugh. That was the military intelligence I recalled from the war.
“We don’t have any choice,” Top mused. “If we wait any longer, he could set that Goddamned pod thing loose and we’ll be chasing alien monsters all around the fucking Cluster. I don’t know how we even got this far without him doing it.” She didn’t quite scowl at Hachette, but I could tell she was having a hard time controlling herself. “I was against this little detour from the get-go, if you remember. Sir.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll never let me forget it, Sergeant-Major,” Hachette told her, rolling his eyes. He raised his hands in surrender, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that even a full bird colonel in charge of a super-top-secret task force was cowed by Top. The only person I’d known who wasn’t had been Captain Covington. “Okay, perhaps you were right. But right now, we have a decision to make, and we can’t wait for better intelligence.” He looked to Vicky and me. “You two know Zan-Thint better than anyone. You’ve talked to him. If we run hot right into Fomor, go in guns blazing, is he going to stand and fight or retreat and try to preserve his military force?”
Oh, wonderful. Put that ball right in our court, a couple of newly-minted captains. I suppose that isn’t really fair. He was asking our opinion, not foisting the decision off on us, and I guess that was better than making the call unilaterally without asking for any advice.
“He’s ready to die for his cause, that’s for certain,” Vicky said, rescuing me from having to make the first assessment. “But it’s not his first choice. He’s willing to sacrifice his people if he has to, but I think it’s always the mission first with him. And if he doesn’t throw his own life away, it’s because he thinks he’s the best one to accomplish that mission.”
I tried to build on her thinking, sounding it out as I spoke.
“Yeah, he had the chance to stand and fight on Bathala, but he took off and kept himself in play. He’s not looking to be a martyr; he’s looking to be the HMFIC at the end of all this.”
“HMFIC?” Fargo repeated, squinting at me with obvious incomprehension.
“Head Mother-Fucker In Charge,” Vicky explained to her.
“This guy Ven-Wan thought Zan-Thint wanted a last stand,” I went on. “But I think he’ll only fight if he thinks he can take us.”
“What would you recommend, then?” Hachette wanted to know.
I considered that for a second, hoping Vicky might jump in again to give me more time to think, but this time, she stared at me and shook her head.
“Your SOP would be to jump into the outer system, right?” I asked. “Take a look around before we commit?”
“Of course,” Hachette agreed.
“He’s going to have early warning out there. If you want my opinion, we should jump in as close as we can and start orbital bombardment before we even launch troop transports. You keep his ships engaged, the assault shuttles and missile cutters keep his landers trapped, and we lead the ground assault and try to trap him on the planet.”
Vicky was nodding.
“It’s simple,” she said. “But I think that’s the best bet unless you’re ready to bring the rest of the Fleet into this.”
“Not an option,” Hachette declared. “Even if I’d been given the clearance to call in support from the Fleet by General Murdock, there’s no time to organize it. Sgt.-Major Campbell is correct, we really couldn’t even afford this detour.” He sighed. “I suppose you can blame it on an Intelligence officer’s instinct not to proceed without more data.”
“The time for talking is over, sir,” Top said, respectful but unyielding. “We need to go end this.”
“Captain Nance,” Hachette said, addressing the ship’s master, who I don’t believe I’d said two words to the entire time we’d been a part of the task force. The ship’s flight crew seemed to regard those of us assigned to the Intelligence end of things as off-limits, like we might tell them some secret by accident and have to kill them. Nance was a doughy, shapeless sort, with a face that looked like wet clay ready for molding.
“Colonel?” Nance responded, looking up from the display at his command station, acting as if he hadn’t overheard any of the conversation and had no idea why Hachette would be asking for him.
“Take us out of orbit. One-gravity burn to the nearest Transition node, and have your navigator lay in a course for Firbolg in the Fomor system.”
“Aye, sir.” Nance touched a control on his command station, and when he spoke again, his voice echoed through the ship and over the earbud of my ‘link. “Attention Orion, this is the captain. Secure rotational drum for immediate departure. All hands to their stations. One gravity acceleration in five minutes. Repeat, one gravity acceleration in five minutes.”
An alarm klaxon began to sound, adding to the urgency. On one of the small sections of the main screen that showed an exterior view of the ship from somewhere on the drive bell, the armored swell that was the rotational drum began to grind to a slow but inevitable halt. The crew inside would already be abandoning the area, heading for duty stations aligned vertically with the drive, ready for the blast of fusion energy to make aft down. Once we were in Transition Space, the field generators that kept us enclosed in a bubble of realspace inside that other reality would also serve to generate a gravity field. On smaller craft, like Dunstan’s cutter, it was more efficient to arrange it horizontally, to make the eventual down perpendicular to the fusion drive since the crew was small and no one would be moving around the ship when it was under acceleration. Not on a vessel of this size, and not on the troop transports Vicky and I had ridden during the war. Down was always in the direction of the fusion drive, whether it was lit or not.
When five minutes had counted down and the orders were repeated between Nance and his Helm officer, the entire superstructure of the ship rumbled like distant thunder, vibrating for a long moment before the shaking disappeared and the ship settled into the rhythm of the fusion drive. The sticky plates in my ship boots that had been holding me to the deckplates became suddenly superfluous and my sinuses went back to the business of smelling and breathing again.
Everyone looked relieved once we were out of free-fall, from the biggest landlubber to the most hardened spacer. If there was anyone who actually liked spending significant time in free-fall, I hadn’t met them yet.
“We have a week in Transit to Firbolg,” Hachette reminded us. “Get with Captain Solano and get yourself integrated into our Drop-Trooper companies. And if Solano tries to pull time in grade, tell him to come talk to me.” He smiled thinly. “Or Sgt.-Major Campbell, if I’m feeling particularly ungenerous.”
“What about her?” Vicky asked, motioning toward Fargo.
“What about me?” the younger woman repeated.
“You don’t need a Goddamned personal assistant, Top,” Vicky scoffed. “But Cam and I might need someone we can count on watching out backs out there. Let her come with us.”
“You don’t have to twist my arm,” Top said. “And I wouldn’t recommend it on general principles anyway. Fargo,” she gestured at the junior NCO, making a motion, that half a Catholic cross sign and half a wave goodbye, “I manumit your service to me and sell your debt to these two lunatics.”
“You’ve been reading historical romances again, haven’t you, Top?” Vicky asked, laughing softly.
“I am verily certain that I doth not know what you snapes prattle on about,” Top affected, waving a pretend handkerchief at her face as if she might faint. “Though if you haven’t read it yet, Honor and Compromise by Delia St. Clair is excellent.”
I stared at Top with horror growing inside my chest, the sort of unreality where everything you thought you’d know about the universe was suddenly proven wrong.
“You read?” I asked Top. “Romance?”
“Victorian mostly.” She seemed not the least bit ashamed of it. “Though Regency will do in a pinch.” She tapped a finger against her ‘link. “I have enough stored on my private account that I’ll never live long enough to finish them all.” Her stare was challenging. “What, you don’t read? Because I rank people who don’t read somewhere on the level of Hell just above child molesters and serial murderers.”
“Oh, I read,” I assured her. “Captain Covington wouldn’t have let me get away with not reading once I’d graduated OCS. Von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan, Miles Chen…. All the military theorists and historians.”
Top snorted and shook her head.
“Son, that ain’t reading, it’s work.” She speared an accusatory finger at me. “You need to let your brain have some fun, something that lets your imagination run wild. Read some damned fiction, boy.”
Vicky was staring at me archly, one of those knowing looks I hated, because she’d said the same thing more than once.
“Okay,” I acceded. “But I’m not reading Victorian romances.”
“Your loss,” Top said with a shrug.
“If you ask me,” Hachette said, arms crossed, looking down his nose at the thought of historical romances, “you need to check out Robert Heinlein.”
I shrugged as I followed Vicky and Fargo off the bridge.
“Never heard of him.”
5
“What the hell use is it being a captain,” I wondered, “if the only thing we’re in charge of is the damned Headquarters Platoon?”
“And Fargo,” Vicky reminded me. “Don’t forget Fargo.”
I wanted to glare at her, but it wasn’t much use when we were both encased in our Vigilante armor. Though it was probably safer.
“How could I forget Fargo?” I agreed. Particularly when she wouldn’t ever shut up and let me forget her.
“You know, sir, ma’am,” she said, prattling on as if she hadn’t heard our private conversation—because she hadn’t, “I was thinking, the Fleet has like, new missile cutters, like the ones that Dunstan…I mean, Lieutenant Dunstan is flying now. They replaced the old ones and sold them off for surplus. I was wondering why they didn’t ever upgrade the Vigilante. I mean, not that it’s a bad design or anything. It got the job done and I think it’s better than the Tahni version—well, obviously it’s better than the Tahni version because we kicked their asses in the war. But I mean, why haven’t we got a new one by now? It’s been like, three years now?”
“Fargo,” I interrupted. It didn’t take.
“I always thought,” she went on as if I hadn’t said anything, “that they should do something with the interface jacks. I mean, we have them implanted and they let us walk and move in these things without falling over like an idiot, but why can’t they hook things up so we can use the interface to fire the weapons? It wouldn’t be that hard, you know?”
“Karen,” I said, raising my voice enough to cut through the chatter.
“Oh, yes, sir?”
“They didn’t let us use our interface jacks to fire the weapons because someone would start daydreaming and blow away half their squad,” I informed her, “or the side of their drop-ship. They want us to have to physically pull the trigger to make sure we don’t do it by accident.”
“Oh, yeah, I can see that,” she said brightly, and I sensed another burst of non-stop talking was coming, so I jumped on it.
“As for the reason why they haven’t replaced the Vigilante, well…tell me something, who are we going to run into with a better setup that we have to worry about? We’re fighting the Tahni right now, again, but who else is there? The Pirate World cabals aren’t going to be running R&D shops building the Vigilante 2.0. Pretty much the only enemy we’d face who could develop a more advanced battlesuit is the Corporate Council, and they’re not going to beat us with their Security Force; they’re going to beat us by bribing our own people.”
“Oh, wow, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Fargo,” Vicky put in gently, “you do know we’re Transitioning in just a few minutes and then we’re going to be dropping onto Firbolg, right?”
“Oh, sure, ma’am! I’m psyched we finally get to take down that asshole Zan-Thint!”
“You’ve only fought his people once,” I reminded her, not so gently. “Why are you so psyched to take him out?”
“Well, it might have only been once, sir, but it sure as heck was enough to make me remember how much I didn’t like the Tahni!”
“Fargo, you’re going to be attached to us in Headquarters Platoon,” I said. “When we hit the ground, Lt. McReady is going to be controlling the Boomers, and you’ll be with us.”
“If the lieutenant is controlling the Boomers,” she asked, “then what are we doing?”
Jack and shit. But I couldn’t say that. Not that I wanted to run the Boomers. They were impressive artillery, basically a heavy coil-gun mounted on a modified Vigilante, but at the cost of mobility and agility. They couldn’t run and they couldn’t hide and being attached at the hip to a bunch of walking targets wasn’t my ideal assignment. McReady could have them.
“The four of us,” I told her, trying to make it sound more important than it was, “you, Wade Cunningham, and Vicky and I, are going to be a kind of reaction force. If it looks like one of the platoons is in trouble, we’ll jump in and reinforce them.”
“But you guys are great in the suits and great leaders!” she protested. “Why wouldn’t they make you company commanders?”
