“Surber speaks for Big Nee,” I remind the team. “And so if he says it, good or bad needs to go out the window. We do it. Unless it’s gonna get us needlessly killed.”
“Disagree,” Winters said, before hastily adding, “But! Not looking to keep you, sir.”
Abers drives an elbow into the kid. “Keep it clamped, son. Carter ain’t talked to his wife in a while. That’s toxic on a relationship, man.” He turns to me. “We’re pulling for your marriage, sir.”
“Your concern is touching,” I say as I navigate through comm channels, hoping to find the lucky winner that will get me through.
Kublar has changed a lot since Victory Company was murdifying (not a word, but oh well) the koobs. The atmospheric communication troubles have significantly abated through an influx of planetary comm stations and corresponding satellites. But most of these are along the coastline, so things still get a little spotty when you’re inland like us. And the mountains and valleys… well, you’re pretty much cut off beyond line-of-sight comm-to-comm efforts.
“I never got married,” Lashley says.
I want to nip this conversation in the bud, too. But it’s rare to hear anything from Lashley. And while I never imagined the big man to have a wife—or even a mother, for that matter—I’m piqued. Plus, Lash is not the kind of guy you want to tell to shut up.
Or at least not the type I want to.
We all wait to see if he’s going to elaborate, but after several seconds pass, it’s clear that those four words are all we’re getting on the subject.
Outside, a pair of featherless bird-things are following the truck, high in the currents of the air. Scavengers with black heads and brown bodies, using leathery, membrane-like wings to glide after us. I take a holo of them to send to the kids. They used to really like it when I sent them pictures of all the exotic animals and plants I saw firsthand courtesy of the Legion. Never saw a tyrannasquid, though. No matter how much they begged me to find one.
Miraculously, my datapad gets a connection. I wait, careful to keep the holocam pointing up at my face—even if it means a close-up of my nostrils—rather than the koob bodies all around me.
Melanie answers and I hear the audio switch to the comm in my ear.
“Carter?”
“Hey, babe.”
“Oba’s nose, Carter, are you okay?”
She sounds concerned. Really worried. In a way it’s refreshing to hear the care in her voice. But it’s also a bit confusing. I look at the mini-image of myself and see that I must have smeared koob-blood all over my forehead when I wiped my brow. Between that and the dust, I look pretty rough.
“Oh. I’m fine, babe. That’s nothing. Just some… fluid from a job.”
I hear Abers snicker in the background.
“Carter… where are you?”
I frown. “You know I can’t tell you that. You shouldn’t even ask, Mel.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence. And I wonder at it. At why I can’t think of anything to say to the woman I love. We used to talk for hours on end before we were married. Ending the comm transmission back then was akin to torture. And when I was in Legion training, she sent me more holos than I had time to even listen to.
But now…
“How’re the girls?”
Mel bites her lip, and then her expression turns into one of frustration.
“Your oldest got suspended for skipping class.”
“Why was Tria skipping school?”
Mel sighs. “She was making out with a boy in the janitor’s closet.”
“What the hell?” I explode in a controlled whisper, hopeful that the guys at the back of the truck don’t hear it. Visions of a visit to my gun safe and then to this little pissant’s house flash before my eyes. But I’m millions of miles away. So I lash out at Mel instead. “Seriously, Mel! What the hell? Get that kid under control!”
“Don’t put that on me, Carter!”
Here we go.
“She needs you here, right now. So does Annikah. The girls need a father in their lives.”
“Listen, Mel, I would love to be home right now. You know that.” I look around, so frustrated that I feel like chucking my datapad off the back of the truck. “But we don’t have a home or anything if I’m not working. And even with the restructures in place, Legion pay doesn’t come close to what I’m getting now.”
The comm in my ear beeps. Not the urgent tone so I ignore it.
“Carter, what’s the good of all this if we never get to see you? To have you in our lives?”
“Mel, we’ve been through this—”
My sentence is cut off at the sight of a brilliant explosion and subsequent boom erupting in the distance. I have a nice view of exactly what Surber meant when he said Command would send in someone to clean up the remaining koobs and their vehicles.
Two spawn-fire missiles slammed into the scene of our handiwork almost as soon as we were clear of danger. I can make out balls of flames and trucks jumping in the air, only to land absolutely consumed by fire.
“I gotta go,” is all I say to Mel.
She manages to stutter out, “Carter, is everything—” before I kill the connection and power off the datapad.
This conversation was probably a mistake. But I didn’t know what to expect from dressing up in koob clothing, and I already had to take down a tribal elder and his fighters riding up on us in technicals once today. Guess I didn’t want to miss what might be my last opportunity to talk to home for a while.
But it was a bad call. I tilt my head back and let it thud against the enclosed wall of the truck bed.
“That’s why I never got married,” says Lashley.
The guys next to him immediately bust up laughing. I start to chuckle, too. Times
