Ribot’s hands went up. “Enough, enough. Finally, Michael, I think you’ve probably guessed what you’ve got to do,” he said with a smile.
Michael responded with a look of mock horror. “I think I have, sir. Off-load all DefGrav’s stuff and on-load all Warrant Officer Ng’s gear.”
“Give that man a banana. Got it in one shot. Right, that’s about it for now from me. Any questions? No? Okay, then. Jacqui, I want all hands in the junior spacers mess in five minutes, officers included. It’s time to tell the troops the good news.”
Wednesday, September 30, 2398, UD
It had been a brutally long day, but finally everything had been done.
Michael’s team had worked like demons to off-load the DefGrav team’s containers, replacing them with Warrant Officer Ng’s stealth-coated containers plus something new from Fleet’s development labs: an experimental small-scale driver mass manufacturing plant, the whole thing squeezed into two containers together with a microfusion plant. Neat, was the consensus of Michael’s team, pleased with the idea that the boffins finally had done something about the perennial curse of independent light scout operations: lack of driver mass. Michael was even more pleased when Mother confirmed that Fleet had sent along two of the engineers responsible for the massive machine. Should maximize the chances of the damn thing working, he thought cynically, and give them someone to blame if it doesn’t.
There was a bit under an hour to spare before the presentation of the final operations plan to Captain Andreesen. Michael lay back on his narrow bunk, watching his personal holovid, the sweat and the peculiarly sour odor that came from working hard in a space suit for hours on end washed away by a luxuriously long hot shower. In the absence of any vidmail, he had set the holovid to cycle between his collection of family holopix and those of Anna. As he watched, he realized, what with everything that had happened, how little he had thought about Anna; a brief feeling of guilt shivered its way up his spine. He froze the holovid on his favorite picture of her.
According to the notes attached to the picture, it had been taken at the height of Charlie Mbeki’s birthday party in Year 2 and showed Anna, head back and face glowing with pure happiness as Michael buried his face in her neck. In a way that he couldn’t begin to express, the holopic encapsulated everything about her that attracted him. Behind the two of them, the faces of the old team reminded him of the innocence they had all lost, he more than most.
The awful thought that he might lose Anna as well as his mother and sister at the hands of the Hammer crossed his mind for a moment before he firmly shoved the unwelcome thought away. You’ll go mad if you think like that, Michael, he told himself, so don’t. Anna was onboard the
But Anna was different. In some way he couldn’t fully define or express, she made him feel complete. Even if she didn’t share the feeling, he knew he owed it to himself to say so, however inadequately.
Mentally squaring his shoulders, he swung his legs over the edge of his bunk and onto the narrow strip of plasfiber carpet tastefully decorated with a mottled purple, yellow, and brown pattern. The bloody designer must have been on something, Michael thought, if he or she imagined that the end result, used in every ship of the Fleet and known Fleetwide as the rat’s vomit carpet, was in any way attractive or desirable. He dressed quickly in a fresh ship suit and within minutes had his tiny cabin squared away in best college style, the bedding immaculate, the plasfiber bedcover taut as a drum skin. Andreesen had a reputation for conducting unscheduled tours, and Michael did not want to be the one who let the side down.
Picking up his old-fashioned scriber and e-paper notebook-he had never gotten out of the doodling habit, though he did draw the line at using real paper, leaving that to the real diehards-he left his cabin to make his way down to the wardroom.
Hosani wanted him to run through his part of the operations plan, and Michael intended to get it 100 percent right. Andreesen was not a man to screw up in front of.
“And so to conclude, sir,” Ribot said with a confidence that he didn’t fully feel in the face of Andreesen’s basilisk-like stare, “a standard covert ops approach and deployment. As ever, the primary risk comes from any late changes that the THREATSUM hasn’t picked up or any unusual Hammer ship movements. But all factors taken into account, we have the right mission profile to succeed. That’s all I have to say. Do you have any questions, sir?”
For fully twenty heart-stopping seconds, Andreesen said nothing, his stare unwavering. Ribot could only look him straight in the eye across the combat information center conference table. Then Andreesen did something that to the best of Ribot’s knowledge had never been observed before. He stood up and leaned over. With the faintest hint of a smile on a face that was, considering the heavy responsibilities borne by its owner, surprisingly young and untroubled, he took Ribot’s hand and shook it vigorously. “No, I don’t. Excellent, Captain, excellent. Not something I say often, as you know. But good luck and may God watch over you all this day.”
Even safely tucked away at his workstation as far away from Andreesen as he could get, Michael imagined he could hear Ribot’s sigh of relief clear across a crowded combat information center.
But Andreesen had Michael’s measure. He turned, and his eyes skewered him. “Helfort! I knew both your father and mother when they were in Space Fleet. Good officers, both of them, and a loss to the Fleet when they retired. My thoughts are with them and of course with your sister. We’ll get them all back safely, I promise.”
Michael could only nod as Andreesen turned back to face Ribot. “Now, Captain, let’s have that drink you promised me and then I’ll leave you in peace.”
For a moment, Michael and everyone else present felt the full force of the Federated Worlds’ commitment to resolve the crisis no matter what. It was an awesome and sobering statement of raw power, and Michael pitied any Hammer stupid enough to get in the way.
Thursday, October 1, 2398, UD
The transition from the cool air-conditioned comfort of the lander to Eternity’s atmosphere was as sudden as it was brutal.
As Digby stood at the foot of the ladder, the raw heat and humidity of late morning wrapped itself around him and left him gasping as he struggled to make his breather seal to a face instantly slicked with sweat.
“So now you know what’s it’s like down here with us mud crawlers, General.” Unlike Digby’s, Professor Cornelius Wang’s face was barely damp, his voice hardly distorted by the bright yellow breather mask that shrouded his lower face. This was his territory, not the general’s, and his body language betrayed his inner confidence, his sense of command.
“Welcome to Eternity Base, General.”
“Kraa’s blood, Cornelius. Is it always as hot as this?” Digby said, his voice half-strangled, his left hand engaged in a futile attempt to keep the sweat beading on his forehead out of his eyes.
“Yes, I’m afraid it is, General,” Wang said apologetically. “Just be thankful it’s not raining, which it seems to do a lot. But a couple of days will have you acclimatized. The Feds’ drug protocols are very effective at accelerating adaptation to heat and humidity. In a few days, you’ll find it relatively comfortable, believe it or not.”
“By Kraa, I hope so. I don’t think this is something I’d want to put up with for very long. Anyway, enough of that. Let’s get on. I want to see everything.”
“Of course. And we have a lot to show you.” With that, Wang waved Digby toward a jeep parked on an access ramp. Despite the fact that it had been planetside for less than two weeks, the jeep’s mud-streaked and
