“Everybody on board,” McKay said. “We got four days ahead in that piece of shit, and I’d like to get it over with as soon as possible.”
“You really think this is going to work, sir?” Crossman asked him. “I mean, there’s only us against that whole ship—and if Lieutenant Stark doesn’t take out the ground control center…”
“Think positive, Tom,” McKay urged with mock enthusiasm. He reached out to pat the chevrons on the man’s shoulder. “You’re a sergeant now—you have to be an example for the men.” He turned to Clarke, one of the autogunners. “Doesn’t Sergeant Crossman inspire you, Clarke?”
“He’s my fuckin’ hero, sir,” the big man grunted.
“There you go, Tom,” Jason said. “Now get your ass on board.”
Crossman followed the others down the skeleton-frame stairway to the access hatch in the side of the courier, leaving Jason on the platform with Ari Shamir and Gunny Lambert.
“Lieutenant Stark’s a good soldier, sir,” Lambert told him, hesitating at the top of the stairs. “We can count on her.”
“I know we can, Gunny,” Jason assured him. The Gunnery Sergeant eyed him closely for a moment, head cocked strangely, as if he saw something different, then turned and headed after his men.
“What was that all about?” Jason wondered, glancing at Ari.
“He was saying to me a couple minutes ago,” Shamir replied, “that there was something different about you the last couple days—good different. But he couldn’t put his finger on it.”
“I think I know what it is.” Jason pulled his helmet out from under his arm and put it on, sliding back the faceplate. “I feel like a Marine again, Ari,” he said thoughtfully. “And the weird thing is,” he went on with a wistful smile, taking a step down the stairs toward the ship, “it feels good.”
Valerie shivered, hugging her arms to her as she paced out into the chill of the night air, letting the fake door to the fake barracks building swing shut behind her. A single bulb mounted above the doorway lit the path out a few meters, but beyond that everything was swallowed in the darkness of the moonless night. At the edge of the cone of feeble light was Glen Mulrooney, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, gazing out at the sky.
“Glen,” she said, stepping up to him—actually, waddling was more accurate, she thought ruefully.
He turned, frowning at the sight of her in a too-small RSC field jacket over the dress she’d worn to the President’s speech. “Val, you shouldn’t be out here,” he admonished her. “You’ll get sick.”
“I just woke up and saw you weren’t in bed,” she explained. “I was worried.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “You wanted to go with them, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t ask,” he admitted dejectedly. “I knew Lieutenant Stark would’ve said no. But I feel so impotent just sitting around here, not knowing what’s happening.”
“Daddy feels the same way,” she told him. “He’s always been in control—and now, when he has the responsibility for the whole government, suddenly everything’s out of his hands.”
“Life’s that way sometimes,” he said, stepping away from her, letting her hand slide off his back. “You think you know where your life is going, you think that everything’s under control, and then you realize it was all an illusion, and you don’t know anything.” His eyes fixed on her. “Or anybody.”
“I know things have been a bit rough between us, Glen,” Valerie said. “And I’m sorry. It’s just that things have seemed so different since Aphrodite…” She trailed off into a cough, winced as it sent a sudden pain through her distended abdomen.
“Are you all right?” he asked dully, more from rote than from any real concern.
“I’m a lot of things, Glen,” she replied with a sigh, shoulders sagging, “but ‘all right’ is not one of them.”
Glen didn’t feel any urge to be sympathetic—didn’t feel anything but an almost uncontrollable impulse to tell her that he knew, to scream that she’d betrayed him. But that was something the old Glen Mulrooney would have done, so he just said, “Maybe you should go back inside.”
“Maybe I should, maybe I should,” she murmured, her words slurring as she seemed to rock back and forth unsteadily.
“Val?” Glen took a step toward her, finally feeling real concern.
“Oh, God…” she moaned, clutching at her stomach, and then she collapsed forward into his arms.
“Val!” Glen staggered with her unconscious weight, but managed to lower her gently to the ground, one hand behind her back, the other at her right thigh. It was then that he felt the moistness soaking the lower half of her dress. “Jesus!” he exclaimed, suddenly realizing that his hand had come away from her thigh slick with blood.
His head wagged back and forth between Valerie’s motionless form and the door to the barracks, frantically debating in that split second whether to go for help or try to lift her and take her inside himself. He realized with a piercing ray of perception that there was no way he could handle her weight and that the attempt might just injure her further.
“Help!” he shouted as he threw open the door to the barracks, sprinting down the stairs. “We need help out here!”
Chapter Twenty-One
“God is on the side not of the biggest battalions but of the best shots.”
The metallic bulk of a Protectorate hopper paced jerkily from one side of the fenced-in compound to the other, its groin-mounted cannon scanning from side to side, throwing an elongated shadow over the sterile, sandy soil. Most of the control center was underground: only the black wedge of the cargo entrance scarred the surface, its huge double-doors yawning invitingly open. The massive, skeletal dish antennae surrounded the entrance, each protected by the same sonic stun fences that guarded the base’s perimeter, and each patrolled by half-squads of biomechs. At the gap in the sonic fences that formed the security entrance, a pair of trollish figures in powered armor squatted motionless, shoulder-mounted weapons trained outward.
Shannon lowered her binoculars, hissing a sigh through her teeth as she stared westward at the setting sun.
“It’s about what we expected,” Kristopolis said with a shrug, still staring across the kilometer of open, grassy plain.
“As long as they don’t spot us,” Shannon whispered hopefully.
The makeshift assault force was spread out through the trees of Powell Federal Preserve, peering through the old security fence that marked the border of No-Man’s Land. Their dozen or so vehicles were parked further back under cover from orbital surveillance. Shannon was amazed so many had made it through—she credited it to the fact that the Protectorate had spread their forces so thin. They’d only lost two of the two-to-four-person groups they’d sent out, leaving them with nearly sixty troops. They’d linked up only three hours before, on the outskirts of the Ruins, and held a final mission brief before taking up their positions here, at the edge of the forest. Now, there was nothing to do but wait for sunset.
“At least there’s only one hopper,” Lieutenant Sanchez mumbled, unconvinced by their optimism. “That we can see.”
Shannon tugged uncomfortably at the neck of her neoprene wetsuit—it was an unseasonably warm fall in New York, and she was sweating like a racehorse in heat. “Might as well get this over with,” she decided, scrambling up from a crouch to join the rest of her infiltration team.
Of the ten individuals selected for the infiltration, six were RSC lifers with combat experience—older NCO’s who’d retired from the Marines to the RSC because of various injuries that would keep them out of space—while the other four were members of the Cleveland PD’s Emergency Response Team. They huddled together under the cover of a stand of oaks, all of them dressed in wet suits, an assortment of diving gear collected on the ground in front of them. She’d barely had time to learn their names, and here they were about to follow her into the valley of death. Just like on Aphrodite.
What had she said to Jason when she’d left for Earth? Something about how she’d had enough of being a
