“Lt. Alvarez,” he said again. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I rasped, staggering as I tried to turn and face him, the weight of the day, of the death, of the many times I’d almost died all catching up with me at once. “What are you still doing here, Sergeant?” I hadn’t meant for it to come out so harshly, like an accusation.
“We were all looking for you, sir,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“We?” I repeated.
I hadn’t noticed the other two suits pounding over the hill behind him, but I knew who they were instantly.
“Cam,” William Cano said, relief heavy in his voice. “Thank God. I thought you’d bought it in the explosion.”
“Where’s the Skipper?” Kovacs wondered. “Did you get to him before everything blew?”
“The Skipper…,” I trailed off, the words fighting and clawing to stay inside my chest, unwilling to come out. I forced them, knowing it had to be said. “The Skipper was the explosion. He overloaded his suit reactor to take out the solenoid. The rest was the plasma breach once the electromagnetic field shut down.”
“The Skipper?” Kovacs put such utter devastation into the question that I felt bad about all the things I’d thought about him.
“Captain Cronje,” I said, fighting down the flare of anger the name invoked. “Did you see where he went?”
“He just yelled at us all to get out,” Cano told me, “then he was gone. He took his company with him, I think, but we weren’t leaving till we found out what happened to you and the Skipper.”
“Fucking bastard,” Vicky muttered and I checked to make sure it was on our private circuit. “He took my platoon with him.”
“Where is everyone?” I asked. “How many effectives do we have left?”
“We got everyone in a defensive perimeter at the front of the power plant,” Cano said. “Our platoon sergeants are getting a head count and checking everyone’s suits. We came to find you and…,” he trailed off. “You know, the Skipper.”
I sighed, the weight of a thousand worlds settling onto my shoulders.
“Show me.”
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The reactor battle had been a knife fight in a closet and I was surprised so many had survived it. Though from the looks of it, not everyone had. The perimeter was a semi-circle extending out nearly a kilometer from one side of the main entrance of the reactor, around to where the main road curved toward the city and then back to the other side, but there wasn’t more than three platoons’ worth of suits in the line.
More were clustered near the yawning half-oval that was the plant’s main entrance, and one of them was Bang-Bang Morrel.
“God damn, sir,” he said, loping away from the pack when he saw me and the others approaching. “I thought sure you’d bought the farm.”
“It was a near thing,” I assured him. “What’s the butcher’s bill? For my platoon and the whole company,” I amended.
“Well,” he said, some of the relief going out of his voice, “it’s not good. We lost Majid, Muller, Kim, and Villanueva.”
Shit. Each name was a punch in the gut. They’d trusted me. The fact that we’d had a job to do and no choice in the matter didn’t make anything about it better.
“Garcia and Hewson are going to make it, but they’re out of action.” Bang-Bang motioned at the half a dozen suits near the entrance. A couple of them were standing, but the rest were seated, and the only reason for a Vigilante to be sitting down was if its legs were damaged. “We got a few others who have minor injuries or burn-throughs, but they can Charlie Mike.”
Continue the Mission. I knew the phrase, but it was old-old military slang, something before even Top’s time.
“The rest of the company…,” he began, but a familiar voice interrupted him.
“The rest of the company ain’t much better,” Top said.
She was one of the suits that was standing, but I thought it had to be a near thing. Her Vigilante looked like some near-sighted High Guard trooper had been using it for target practice, and if there was more than twenty square centimeters of her suit that didn’t have a crack or burn or crater in it, I couldn’t find it. I didn’t know how bad it was for her inside the armor, but at least she sounded more coherent now than when the pain-killers had first hit her.
“You have three full-strength platoons if you shift some things around,” she told me, “and only two platoon leaders for them.”
“But there’s three of us, Top,” Kovacs said, sounding as if he thought the pain meds were clouding her thoughts. “Me, Cano and Alvarez.”
“No, Francis,” Top said, using the officer’s first name in a deliberate shot at his thick-headedness. “There’s two of you, because Lt. Alvarez is now acting company commander.”
“How did you know?” I asked. I hadn’t been looking forward to breaking the news to her.
“He’s been my boss for almost five years,” she reminded me. “You didn’t think I’d know?”
The delivery of the words was flat, emotionless, but I knew the hurt was there, even if she wouldn’t let herself feel it yet.
“He accomplished the mission,” I told her.
“I know. He always did.”
“You’re wrong, Top,” Vicky said. I turned physically at the pronouncement, even though it made little sense in the suit, wondering what she was saying. “There’s three platoon leaders,” she clarified. “Cronje took my platoon with him, and I’m not inclined to go chasing him down on my own.”
“Okay,” I said. “You take Third platoon. Manley can fill in as squad leader for Majid. We’ll sort things out, rearrange what we need. Top,” I turned my attention back to the
