Forsaken Skies (36 page)

Maggs suddenly found himself paying attention. Was it possible that he even cared? Unlikely, but he wanted very much to hear what she said next.

“Walk around in circles,” she said. “Look for anything living. If you find something living, stab it until it isn't living anymore. Repeat.”

When they arrived at the ground control station, Ensign Ehta squinted at the two of them. Thom had the idea she'd been asleep when they arrived, napping in her chair. The minder in front of her displayed the gray shapes of the enemy fleet, just as he'd seen them before. “Something up?” she asked them.

Thom opened his mouth to speak but Roan beat him to it.

“The elder wants to know if there are any updates on the fleet.”

Ehta nodded and rubbed at her face. “Well,” she said, “I've been tracking that big line ship headed toward Aruna. It's definitely sticking to its course. Lanoe and them are going to have a nasty fight on their hands.”

“Do you think they'll win?” Thom asked, leaning over the display, trying to wring some new information out of the gray shapes.

Ehta laughed. “That's what cataphract fighters are made for, kid. Fighting line ships. Of course, it doesn't always work.”

“They'll make it,” Thom said. “They have to.”

Having received the update, they had no reason to stick around. Thom knew they couldn't proceed with Ensign Ehta there, but he had no idea how to get rid of her. Roan went over and examined a rack of equipment, while Thom just stood in the middle of the room. He realized how sweaty his hands were and he shoved them in his pockets. He caught himself staring at Ensign Ehta, and tried to look away. When he looked back she was staring at
him,
with a sly look on her face.

“You two, huh?”

“What?” he asked, a little too quickly. His voice a little too high-pitched.

A mischievous smile played across her face. “I suppose it's no great surprise.”

“It isn't?” Thom asked.

“Hell, kid. I remember when I was your age. And the two of you've been thick as thieves the last couple of days. It's the oldest story in the world.”

Thom's mouth wouldn't seem to close properly. He had no idea what she was talking about. When he looked over at Roan, though, he saw she was blushing bright red.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ehta said, rising from her chair. “You throw two young people together, they're bound to at least start thinking about it. Well, I'll tell you what. I'm not exactly necessary to the cause here, right now. Nobody's going to notice if I step away from my post for…an hour, say?”

“I don't—I mean, that would be—”

The Ensign held up her hands for peace. “Never let it be said I stood in the way of young love, right? Just make sure to clean up after yourselves.” She made a point of meeting Thom's eye. Then she gave him a knowing wink, and left without further comment.

Once she was gone, Roan moved over to the console. She turned around and faced Thom. “She thought we were—that we came here to—”

Thom nodded. “Listen, it got her out of the way, right? Let her think that. For now, anyway. We need to focus.”

There was no arguing with that. Roan unrolled her minder on the console while Thom studied the controls that moved the big comms dishes outside.

Having the video file in their possession wasn't enough. The Retreat controlled all network traffic on Niraya, and if they'd simply tried to share the video to everyone in the directory, the Retreat's censoring software would have seen it instantly and stopped it from going out. No, they needed to broadcast it directly, with a signal strong enough to make sure it was picked up by every minder and display in Walden Crater.

The ground control station's dishes were capable of sending a signal like that to distant planets. It was more than strong enough for their purpose.

Once they were sure Ehta would be far enough away that she wouldn't see the dishes moving, Thom rearranged the array until it was pointing inward, toward the crater. The dishes groaned and struggled to realign themselves. One froze in place, still pointing straight upward. It didn't matter—they still had more than enough signal strength.

Roan had the video ready to go. She turned on a microphone and got ready to introduce it. Before she started, though, she looked over at Thom, her eyes locked on his. She needed to know he was still sure. That he still wanted to do this.

It meant more trouble for him, more people to get angry with him. Thom was certain it wasn't what Lanoe had intended for him to do, back when he'd made Thom his local liaison.

He nodded without hesitation. He reached over and tapped a virtual key to start the broadcast.

Roan stared at the microphone for a second as if she thought it might bite her. Then she began. “Um. Hello,” she said.

The one thing they'd forgotten to do was to think of how to introduce the video. What to say. In the end Roan kept it simple.

“This is going out to everybody. Everybody we can reach. What most of you know, I think, is that Niraya is under attack. What you don't know is who's attacking us. The video we're about to show you is going to be tough to watch, but it'll give you some information. What you do with that information is up to you.”

She tapped the face of her minder and the video started to play. She turned away from the display as if she didn't want to see it again.

On the control board, every indicator was green. The signal was strong, and it would blanket the entire crater.

They let the video run to the end. Then they switched everything off. Roan rolled up her minder and held it tight in her hands.

“It's done,” she said.

Zhang had been out in the tender all day, up above the clouds. When she returned she went straight to Lanoe and the two of them whispered together, for far longer than Maggs strictly liked.

He was under the Mylar tent, relaxing in a folding camp chair at the time. The moon's gravity was pitiful but still, indolence was a habit he'd always cultivated.

“What do you think is going on?” Valk asked. The giant paced back and forth, stomping out from under the tent to get a better look at Lanoe and Zhang, then stomping back into the shelter. Rainwater dripped from him, big, fat drops falling slowly to the ground in the low gravity so that it looked like he was sweating through his suit. Proserpina looked up in annoyance as some of the rain got on her oh-so-fragile equipment. “Did she find something up there?”

“I'm sure,” Maggs said, letting his head roll from side to side, “they'll inform us when they think we need to know.”

Proserpina frowned as she looked between him and Valk's black polarized helmet. “Lanoe said something about a counterattack, earlier.”

“Maybe that's it,” he said, and feigned a yawn. He looked over at Valk. “If you're going to keep stalking back and forth like an exhibit at a zoo, perhaps you could do it somewhere other than my field of vision.”

Valk stopped pacing. Instead he folded his arms and bobbed up and down like he needed to urinate.

One of the great compensations for the dreariness of Naval service, Maggs had always found, was that your suit took care of such things without ever requiring you to think about them. He frowned at the big fool, then went back to his studied attempt at expending no energy whatsoever.

Alas, it was not to be. Lanoe and Zhang finished their tense discussions and together they came into the tent. “Time to pack up,” Lanoe told Proserpina.

“I think I might be getting somewhere,” she told him. “Can you give me another hour? I've almost got the power system in this thing figured out.”

Lanoe shook his head. “No, sorry. You're going home.”

Valk stopped moving. He was as still as a very tall statue.

“We expected the enemy to send a massive force this way as soon as they realized their facility was offline,” Lanoe told them all. “I've had us camped out here so we would be ready to face that. Funny thing is, they didn't take the bait.”

“Not on our timetable, anyway,” Zhang said.

Lanoe nodded. “They dispatched one of their destroyers this way. It's moving slower than I thought it would, though. Being cautious. Most likely it's scanning the moon right now, trying to figure out what happened, from about a half an AU out. At its current speed it'll take a couple days to get here—days we don't have. The main fleet is still moving toward Niraya, and they'll arrive within a week. If we wait here for the destroyer to arrive, we put everything at risk.”

“I'm guessing that you've got a different plan,” Valk suggested.

“Sure,” Lanoe said. “We're going to take the fight to them.”

For a moment the rain pattering on the tent was the only sound, as all of them considered what Lanoe's words meant.

If no one else wanted to, Maggs figured he would be the one to make it clear. “We're going to face down a destroyer with no ground support. Out here about as far from Niraya as we can get. Just the four of us.”

“No,” Lanoe told him. “Three of us will head out there in our fighters. The fourth will take M. Derrow home in the tender. It means fighting this thing at less than full strength, but we can't risk just leaving her here alone.”

“That's very…kind of you,” Proserpina said.

“I need you back on Niraya, getting the engineering crews ready to build me those guns,” Lanoe told her. “Maggs,” he said. “I assume you want to be the one to take her back in the tender.”

Oh, now, that was rich. On the face of it, of course, it made sense. Everyone knew that he and Proserpina had a special sort of understanding, and maybe Lanoe just meant Maggs would want to make sure she was safe. Or, on the other hand, he could be impugning Maggs's honor.

Well, it would certainly be the prudent thing to do, to simply say yes. The Navy handbook probably listed some carefully worked out equation on what the chances were of three fighters taking out a destroyer on their own, and the percentage was probably on the low side.

But if Maggs did the prudent thing now—

You've never been a coward, Maggsy,
his father's voice told him.
Now's your chance to show 'em all up.

Indeed.

“No,” he said. “Send Valk.”

“Me?” the big pilot asked.

“Yes, you,” Maggs told him. “You've already gotten your taste of glory. I haven't fired so much as a shot in this fight yet. It's my turn.”

Lanoe shrugged, as if it meant nothing to him either way. “Fine. We'll get extra fuel and ammunition cartridges from the tender, then leave as soon as the fighters are ready. Valk, why don't you help the engineer with her stuff?”

It was exceedingly hard to tell, but Maggs thought the big freak looked like he wanted to protest. Eventually, though, his shoulders sagged and he went to pick up one of the equipment boxes.

“Permission to say goodbye to the engineer, sir?” Maggs asked. “Seeing as I may not return?”

Lanoe just waved in assent. He was already headed off toward his FA.2. Maggs went over to Proserpina and put a hand on either of her shoulders. “No time for a proper farewell,” he told her.

She looked confused and scared. Which of course just meant she'd been paying attention.

He slid his hand down to her wrist, then summoned the display there. On the floating panel that appeared he tapped a few virtual keys until he'd established a radio frequency only the two of them could hear.

“Forgive me for taking the liberty,” he told her. “There's something I need to say in private before I go—”

“Auster,” she said, “please don't. I know you're going to tell me you love me or something, but that feels like we're never going to see each other again.”

He fought back the urge to laugh. He was fond of her, definitely, but they were hardly sweethearts after one very pleasant night together. “Listen to me,” he told her. “This is very important. I've been holding it back while the others were around, but you need to hear it and this might be my last chance.”