“I hope so.”
Digby truly hoped Wang did, if only because progress, blatantly obvious uninterrupted progress and lots of it, was probably the only thing that would keep Merrick from recalling him to a certain death. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to clean up before I meet our unwilling guests. Which shift do I talk to first?”
“Red, General. Blue is on-shift at the moment, and they won’t finish up until this evening. I’ve scheduled you to speak to Red Shift this afternoon, if that’s okay. It’s 15:00 local now, so that gives you plenty of time. Blue Shift is scheduled for tomorrow.” Wang’s tone was brisk but businesslike as he recovered his composure.
“Fine. Show me where to put my kit.”
“Follow me, General.”
“And so, let me finish by saying that for all of you, Eternity is now your destiny and what you put in will determine what you take out. This is your planet now, so make the most of it. That’s all.”
As Digby stepped down from the back of the jeep, a small sigh washed across the untidy throng gathered in front of him. If they hadn’t worked it out before, they certainly had now, Digby thought. The one part of the Feds’ standard terraforming package that Digby had not brought planetside-the food production plant-would ensure their cooperation, and Digby was now happy that they all knew where they stood.
At the front of the crowd, Kerri and Sam Helfort stood silent. Like everyone else ripped out of the comfortable and safe world that had been the
Sam was the first to speak. “Fuck” was all she said.
After a long silence, Kerri spoke. “Sam, please.” Her voice was tired. She didn’t have the energy to take Sam to task as once she would have done.
“I know, Mom, I know,” Sam said, her voice flat, the uncertainty obvious. “But it’s how I feel.”
“Sam!” Kerri said fiercely, turning to look Sam right in the face. “Promise me. I know we have no reason to hope, but tell me that you will never ever give up. If we are to come out of this, we just have to stay fit and well until the Feds come to get us. And come they will, one day. These bastards can’t keep it a secret forever, I know they can’t.”
“You’re right, Mom, that’s all we have to do. I know that’s all we have to do.” Sam’s voice brightened. “Come on, the gang’s going down to the beach for a swim, and I’m hoping that John and Jarrod are going to go along as well.”
“All well and good but don’t forget Arkady, young lady,” Kerri said, getting only a grin in response, a grin that said, “I’m only young once, for God’s sake, and I intend to make the most of it!”
As they walked back to the open-sided hut that passed for home, Kerri marveled for a moment at how the young girl had been transformed in the space of a few short weeks. The steel in her voice, the determined look on her face, the ability to rise above the moment, were pure Helfort. For the first time in many weeks Kerri’s mood lifted.
Perhaps it would all work out, though for the life of her she couldn’t see how or when.
Thursday, October 1, 2398, UD
As SBS-4 receded slowly behind
In the whole history of humanspace, Michael was pretty sure, there had never been such a thing as a comfortable space suit. Worse for someone destined to see a lot of the inside of space suits, he doubted there ever would be. In front of and around him, Michael’s team morphed from the large orange lumps that made up
But no such luck for Michael, and after a few words with Spacer Karpov, the youngest member of the surveillance drone division, he and Strezlecki disappeared down the hatch, heading for the first planning meeting with the covert support operations team and its extremely taciturn and uncommunicative leader, Warrant Officer Jacqueline Ng, known as Doc but only to anyone prepared to take liberties with a woman who had a Fleetwide reputation as a thoroughly competent and tough operator.
As Michael entered the wardroom, Ng and her senior spacers-two chiefs and two petty officers-were sitting waiting, marked out as special forces by left shoulder patches embroidered with one of the most elusive and smartest alien animals yet discovered by man, the T’changa from Carr’s World, an animal with the ability to adjust its skin pattern and color to blend into the background so fast and so effectively that it put marine-issue chromaflage suits to shame. But it didn’t escape Michael’s notice that the regulation acknowledgment of an officer’s arrival was conspicuously absent.
Fuck that, Michael thought. He didn’t care if Ng was a fucking legend.
“Doc. How are you? Ready to go?” Michael’s voice was deliberately enthusiastic, as though they were there to swap bullshit war stories-of which he had a few now, come to think of it-over a few beers rather than review the difficult and dangerous business of landing a deepspace light scout on one of Hell system’s outer moons right under the noses of the Hammer.
Waving Strezlecki into the seat alongside him, Michael sat at the end of the small table with a fixed grin on his face and waited a moment while the chunky woman, her hair streaked with iron-gray and her face expressionless, looked steadily at him for a good ten seconds. Then, as a tiny small smile turned up one corner of her mouth, she leaned forward and half stood up, followed by the rest of her team.
“My apologies, sir. We’ve quite forgotten our manners.”
Michael couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing, less at the elaborate charade he and Ng had played and more because he successfully had navigated yet another trap that the people who ran the day-to-day business of the Fleet liked to set for young officers.
“Not a problem, Warrant Officer Ng, not a problem.”
A tiny nod from Ng acknowledged Michael’s small victory as he continued. “It’s good to have you and your team onboard. I think you know we’ve seen a lot of the Hammer close up, and it seems we are going to do it again. Now, before we start, I’ve commed you all with the cargo manifests-all containers loaded and stowed as per the plan you sent up. And none bent or damaged, I’m happy to say.”
“Pleased to hear it, sir. We get very unhappy when grunts-sorry, sir, regular spacers-damage our stuff.” From the look on her face, Michael was prepared to believe her. “By the way, sir, could you give my regards to your parents when next you see them. I served with both of them way back when.”
God’s blood, Michael thought. Was there any spacer over the age of fifty who hadn’t served with one or the other or both of his parents? “Of course I will.” He paused for a second. “You know that I have a personal stake in this business?”
“We do, sir. Is it an issue?” Ng’s face and voice were carefully neutral.
“No. Just makes me want to get the job done right, that’s all. And I’m sure if it gets too personal, someone will take the time to let me know.”
Ng put her head back and laughed. “I can tell you, sir, you are your parents’ son. Now, shall we?”
“Yes, let’s start. Captain Ribot wants a joint briefing at 20:00 this evening, so we need to get on with it. First, let me introduce my offsider, Petty Officer Strezlecki.” Ng and Strezlecki exchanged frosty nods. She was what Ng was pleased to call a grunt, and it was no surprise that Strezlecki was no great fan of special forces; clearly, she wasn’t going to make an exception even for a woman with Ng’s fearsome reputation. “Second, have you gotten everything you need from
“We have. Lieutenant Kapoor has gotten us everything we needed. We’re well settled in, thanks.”
Michael hadn’t expected anything else. “Okay, they didn’t tell us much about dirtside covert ops at the college. We always got the feeling that the powers that be didn’t exactly approve. So this is all new to me, and
