Chains of Command (35 page)

Three minutes later, our two-ship formation is flying away from the patrolling Shrike’s radar cone at low altitude, polychromatic armor active. Unless the Shrikes have already spotted us and locked their fire-control radar on us, we can hide from them easily enough. But that requires staying in motion, burning precious fuel we don’t have to spare. Sooner or later, we’ll be stranded somewhere with dry tanks, and then all the stealth technology won’t do us a bit of good.

Halley and Lieutenant Dorian spend the next twenty minutes threading a course between the likely detection bubbles of two patrolling Shrikes. They are focusing their search efforts on the low mountain ridge where we set up our last two deployment points, and we take a westerly course and leave the shelter of the mountains behind reluctantly. With nothing better to do, I watch the optical feed from our passive gear again as it maps the landscape outside and translates it into coordinates and icons on the TacLink map. But as we stay aloft and on the move for an hour and then another, I can’t help but wonder to what end I am collecting recon data that nobody else will get to see.

Finally, our pilots find an acceptable new deployment point to put down the Blackflies again, hundreds of kilometers to the northwest of our old landing spot. It’s a forested plateau dotted with little lakes, and the terrain is just hilly enough to offer a radar shadow to hide in. Halley and Lieutenant Dorian set down their ships in two separate clearings a few hundred meters apart.

“You know the drill,” Sergeant Fallon announces to the platoon-and-a-half in the cargo hold. “Perimeter security, three-sixty degrees. Eyes and ears, people.”

Outside, the engines come to a stop. A few moments later, Lieutenant Dorian comes out of the cockpit passage. I unplug myself from the console, take my helmet off, and follow him down the ramp and into the sunlight.

“What’s the fuel situation?” I ask.

“Thirty percent, plus the emergency reserve,” he says, and I suck in air sharply and imitate a flinch.

“We are hauling so much weight around at low level, I’m not sure I could even make orbit with what’s left. Not with sixty troops packed into the back of the ship.”

“Well, shit,” I say. “I guess we need to be looking for a fuel stop on this rock.”

“I suspect they won’t be greeting us with open arms if we just show up at the nearest Shrike base for a refill,” Lieutenant Dorian replies.

“I’m down to two-thirds,” Halley says when we set up our little command post in the woods between Blackfly One and Two. Our three platoons are dispersed in the woods, as much for keeping them out of harm’s way in case the drop ships get spotted from the air as for physical security.

“We spend another day dodging Shrikes, we’ll be down to nothing,” Lieutenant Dorian says. “And then we’ll have no mobility beyond our boots.”

“Remember Willoughby?” I ask Halley.

“What about it?”

“Well, they had spare fuel at the terraforming stations. We saw at least three of those that were cold. You think they have fuel storage there?”

“They wouldn’t leave fifty thousand gallons of JP-101 in the ground,” Halley says. “Not in a place like this.”

“Then we need to find a different fuel source. Or put what’s left to better use than running away until we can’t.”

“What did you have in mind, Lieutenant?” Halley asks me.

“Let me talk to that Shrike jock again,” I say.

“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” Captain Beals says, in a tone of voice that makes it very clear that he’s not terribly interested in doing anything for me at this time. He looks past me and eyes Sergeant Fallon nervously, who is sitting on a fallen tree fifty meters away and opening a meal pouch with her combat knife in a very unsubtle manner. We are in a clearing in the nearby woods, just barely out of sight and earshot of the drop ship and the SI troopers gathered around it.

“I’m not going to play good cop, bad cop with you, Captain,” I say. “I’m not half as good at threatening people as Sergeant Fallon. I’m planning on appealing to your self-interest.”

“Oh,” he says, with a sardonic little inflection. “Well, I wish you the best of luck with that, Lieutenant.”

“You better hope I’m successful. Because if I lose my patience with you, I’ll stop being a moderating influence on the master sergeant over there.”

He glances over at Sergeant Fallon again and quickly averts his gaze.

“What do you want?”

“You’re a Shrike jock. You know the maps for this place by heart. I want you to sit down with me at the command console and mark every airbase and settlement on this continent, along with troop strengths and defensive measures.”

Captain Beals barks a laugh. “You want me to give you the entire defense setup of Arcadia. Sell out my comrades and help you kill them easier.”

“Pretty much,” I reply.

“Why the fuck would I want to do that? Because then you’ll keep that battle bitch over there from carving me up with her knife?” He shakes his head. “They’ll find you sooner or later. And then they’ll mow you down for what you did back at the 85th base. They may get me, too, but I’d rather go that way than get skinned by Sergeant Psycho over there.”

I look at the captain, who is sitting on the ground cross-legged with his wrists flex-cuffed together. Then I crouch down in front of him like Sergeant Fallon did a few hours ago. He looks up at me warily.

“Let’s stop the feather-preening. Let me lay this out for you. The Fleet—the real Fleet—knows where you are. Both of them do. The SRA are pulling on the same rope with us right now, and they have a lot more ships left than we do. Sooner or later, they’ll come for the stuff you stole. Or just to fuck up your little paradise, out of spite.”

Captain Beals looks at me, but doesn’t say anything snippy in response.

“When they come, this is going to end in one of two ways for you. You’re going to die in battle, or they’ll capture you and put you in front of a military tribunal. I don’t think I need to tell you how that’ll go for you,” I say.

He looks over toward Sergeant Fallon again, who is calmly eating out of the ration pouch on her lap. “But this is where you come in and play good cop.”

“I’m not good,” I reply. “I only want to get off this rock and back home with my wife. I don’t give a shit about you. But I’m counting on the fact that you don’t want to die, either.”

“Who the hell does?” he replies. “So what are you going to dangle in front of me, to get me to rat out my comrades?”

“We pull this mission off, I’ll testify that you provided instrumental assistance to us. You come back home with us, and I’ll put in a good word at your tribunal. You won’t be here when the Fleet shows up and kills or arrests everyone on this rock for desertion and high treason. And you’ll be spared a blindfold and a firing squad.”

“And if you lose? What if I give you the information you want and you all get killed?”

“Then you’re no worse off than before. From where I’m sitting, you can’t lose either way. Or you can just take your chances with the Fleet or the Lankies, whoever shows up here first. But someone will show up, because everyone already knows where you went. We are just the recon team, and we took out a quarter of your offensive airpower. Once the rest of the Fleet shows up, or the SRA decide to get themselves a nice, pre-terraformed colony for their own use, you people are fucked.”

“You may be wrong all around,” Captain Beals says.

“Or your bosses may be,” I reply. “They were already wrong twice. They thought nobody could track where you went, and they thought Earth was about to fall anyway. You really want to put all your chips on their call again?”

Captain Beals looks past me and chews on his lower lip. He stares off into the woods between the two drop ships for a little while. I get up from my crouching stance and step back a little. The forest we’re in is another pine grove, strong trees at least twenty meters tall. If it weren’t for the giant blue orb on the horizon in the distance, it would look and feel like Earth.

Another empty and clean world, and we bring death and destruction to it the first chance we get
, I think.

“They’re looking for you. They’ll capture you and haul you in, and then they’ll put me up against the wall when you tell them I’ve talked. Sorry, Lieutenant. I think I’d rather take my chances with them. And maybe the rest of you will be too busy with the Lankies to come calling here.”

I close my eyes and try to control the sudden rage that is flooding me.

Selling each other out for little favors, for tiny scraps from the tables of our masters. Is that all we’ve ever done? Is that all we’ll ever do, even with the world going to shit and our exterminators at the door? Billions of lives are riding on the outcome of Mars, and this waste of biomass in a flight suit is willing to sell all of them out to save his own hide?

Something in my brain just gives way. Until now, I’ve never fully understood why and how Sergeant Fallon lost her idealism and turned into the person she is, but now I begin to get my head around it.

I turn around and walk away from Captain Beals.

“Master Sergeant,” I shout, and Sergeant Fallon looks my way.

“Sir.”

“Take out your sidearm and shoot this man in the head.”

Behind me, I hear a yelp of protest and surprise.

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Fallon says. She puts aside her ration bag and stands up. Then she starts walking over to where Captain Beals is sitting on the ground. As she passes me, she unsnaps the retention hood of her sidearm’s holster. She looks at me as I pass her, maybe looking for a sign that I am bluffing, that I need her to be bad cop to my good cop for a minute, but I avert my gaze and keep walking. Behind me, I hear a pistol leaving its holster, and then the racking of a slide.

“Stop!” Captain Beals’s shout is almost a scream. “Lieutenant, stop! I’ll tell you what you want to know. I’ll take your deal. Just stop.”

For just a second, I let the rage control me as I consider just letting Sergeant Fallon go ahead with it and rid us of the captain’s dead weight to haul around. Then reason takes over. I have more lives to think about than just mine and Sergeant Fallon’s.

I turn around. Sergeant Fallon has almost reached the captain, and he’s looking up at her with wide, terrified eyes. She raises her weapon, and he lets out an inarticulate noise of fear.

“Master Sergeant,” I shout. “Hold fire.”

She looks over at me, her targeting laser never wavering from the captain’s forehead.

“Sir.”

I look at the terrified captain and the cold-as-a-glacier master sergeant. I’ve never been so fully aware of the fact that I have someone’s life in my hands. If I give the word, Sergeant Fallon is going to shoot this officer with the same lack of hesitation she’d show if I told her to smash a wasp.

I feel my rage subsiding a little, no longer seizing my brain in a stranglehold. Whatever I’ve become in this armor, this uniform, under this flag—I’m not yet the kind of man who can order the execution of a prisoner who’s sitting before me with his wrists bound together, and I hope I never will be.

“Deal’s off,” I say to the captain. “You tell me what you know, you get to keep sucking down air for now. But I won’t vouch for you when the Fleet comes. That was your decision, not mine.”