Forsaken Skies (67 page)

It took him a while to realize they had company. Ships—dozens of them—flying in formation, keeping a set distance away from the BR.9 but matching its course exactly.
No,
he thought,
no, not after all that
. The humblest alien scout could easily burn them all to a crisp, as beaten up and wrecked as they were. If there were any interceptors in that formation, they were—

Then he actually looked at their escort. Blinked a few times.

Those weren't alien drones.

They were Z.XIXs. Cataphract fighters.

One shifted inward until it was flying right along side them. Until Lanoe could look through its canopy and see its pilot.

“Did someone call for the cavalry?” Maggs asked.

T
he Hoplite-class cruiser had a wide hangar bay amidships, capable of holding a dozen cataphract fighters. One of those berths had been cleared out to make room for the prize specimen of the expedition: an alien lander, missing only two of its multitudinous legs. It had been carefully drained of power until it was no longer dangerous, but it still twitched every now and then like a sleeping dog, probably aware that there were living things nearby and searching for a way to get at them.

It had been found floating loose in space near the ruined queenship, perhaps ejected during the explosion that had slagged the big alien vessel. Just getting it into the fighter bay had been a bit of a challenge, but nothing a little Navy ingenuity couldn't master. Engineers were already studying it as the cruiser burned back toward Niraya.

On the bridge of the Hoplite, Rear Admiral Karten Wallys watched a display of the hangar deck. As the lander twitched his eyes jumped with excited light. “Oh, my, yes,” he said. “Oh, indeed. Maggsy, I believe you can tell your mother she won't have to worry about creditors for a while.”

Smug little bastard,
Maggs's father said inside his head
. He was insufferable when I was alive. He'll be un-bloody-bearable now.

“I'm glad it meets with your satisfaction,” Maggs told the older man.

Among the great thinkers of the Admiralty, there had been a long-running debate as to why humanity had never, after centuries among the stars, met so much as one intelligent alien. The prevailing opinion had always been that there was no such thing, that life had only ever arisen on one planet, Earth, and thus it should ever be.

Among the few dissidents from that belief, Wallys had always numbered the most insistent and opinionated. He had spent much of his career chasing alien spoor and had been widely derided for it.

Now he had real evidence of alien intelligence. When his people had finished studying the lander, there would be no doubt it had been built by nonhumans. That it came from another species. He would be able to prove his critics wrong. For a man like Wallys that would always be the chiefest among pleasures.

Of course, it hadn't been easy to convince Wallys that Maggs had what he was looking for. It had taken a fair amount of persuasion to get the Rear Admiral to dispatch this expeditionary force, and Maggs had been forced to make many promises. Had there been no intact alien drones left in the system by the time they arrived, he would have had a great deal of explaining to do.

So nice when something actually worked out in this life.

With the cruiser under acceleration there was a hint of gravity on the bridge. It caused Maggs some soreness in his broken leg but it spared them all the indignity of having to float around like circus performers while they worked. Technical and staff officers moved about the bridge's workstations, keeping the ship in trim, while large displays showed views of Aruna. Fighters streaking across the clouded sky of the moon, searching for intact alien machinery. Suited figures cutting their way through the still half-molten remains of the queenship, looking for anything that might have survived the alien craft's demise. There was an enormous amount of work to be done, and the cruiser was likely to stay in the system for months while any bit of data concerning aliens might still be gleaned. If any drones remained active—other than the one in the fighter bay, of course—they could be dealt with safely by the expeditionary force's impressive firepower. It looked like the people of Niraya were safe.

As for Maggs himself, he planned on sticking around not one second longer than was physically necessary. He had his brand-new Z.XIX fueled and ready to take him someplace more civilized. All the warrants and bulletins surrounding his less than legitimate activities were in the process of being expunged, another nice little perk thanks to Uncle Rear Admiral Wallys and his obsession with all things alien. Maggs could go back to his job working as a Centrocor liaison or retire from the Navy altogether, if he liked.

He looked forward to having options for a change. Mother's debts had been hanging over his head far too long.

Of course, he knew she would start racking up new ones without delay. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, and all that.

The hatch at the back of the bridge opened and everyone looked up to see a suited figure climb through. When he saw who it was Maggs stood up a little straighter, and kept his hand near the sidearm holstered on the leg of his thinsuit.

“Permission to enter the bridge, sir?” Aleister Lanoe asked.

“Of course, Commander,” Wallys said, looking up from his display, if only a moment. “You and I have much to discuss, don't we?”

“Yes, sir,” Lanoe replied. He came over and stood at attention next to the admiral's console.

“You did some incredible work here, given the resources you had,” Wallys told the old pilot. “We came as fast as we could but without your efforts a lot of people would have died before we could have saved them.”

“Sir,” Lanoe said.

“I want you to know that all is forgiven.” Wallys tore his gaze away from the lander in the display long enough to give Lanoe a curt nod. “The matériel you…requisitioned from Navy stores, for instance. The fact that you didn't actually have the authority to transfer Ensign Ehta or Lieutenant Zhang to your command. I think we can forget all the broken regulations, considering what we got in exchange. By damn, first proof of a nonhuman intelligent species! This is a moment that will go down in history, and all of our names will ring with honor for generations.”

“As you say, sir,” Lanoe told him. “I'm not very interested in history.”

“What do you want, then? I daresay you can have it. A commendation would be easy enough to arrange. Not that you have any shortage of those. How'd you like to have your command reinstated? A new squadron all your own?”

Lanoe turned and looked Maggs right in the eye.

Maggs made a point of not flinching.

“I saw a Z.VII down in one of your bays,” Lanoe said. “A two-seater reconnaissance scout. I wonder if I could borrow it for a while? I lost my FA.2 in the battle.”

“All yours,” Wallys said, with a cheerful grin. “Going somewhere? With someone special?”

“One of my officers, Tannis Valk, was killed here. I managed to recover his body and I'd like to take it to his homeworld for a proper burial.”

Wallys's grin might have faded by a few watts. “The Blue Devil. The, ah, Establishment man.”

“That's correct. I promise I'll keep it a quiet affair,” Lanoe said.

“Very good. But that's all you want? Just a fighter of your own?”

“It's all I've ever needed. With your leave, sir, I'll be on my way.”

Wallys shook his head. “I think you're forgetting one thing, Commander. I believe you owe someone a word of thanks. When we arrived in-system you were down to just one cataphract facing nearly a hundred alien drones. You didn't even have a ship of your own to fly. If it weren't for our prompt arrival I daresay it would be your funeral to be seen to. And if it weren't for Maggsy here, we wouldn't have come. I believe, sir, you're in his debt.”

Lanoe's face hardened. His wrinkled features had always been hard to read in the past. Not this time. The look he gave Maggs spoke volumes.

“I'm only sorry,” Lanoe said, “that I can't pay Lieutenant Maggs exactly what I owe him, right here and now.”

Maggs managed to wait until Lanoe had cleared the bridge before he allowed himself a little shudder of fear.

The cruiser's medical suite was cramped and cluttered with equipment. Patients were sequestered to small bunks set into the walls. Roan stared up at a ceiling no more than twenty centimeters from her face and felt like she was lying in a coffin.

She'd come pretty close to needing one. The doctors had spent hours bringing her back from the edge of death, repairing the damage her body had suffered in the wreck of the rover, treating her for blood loss and anoxia. There had been tests to make sure she hadn't suffered any irreparable brain damage—she'd had to look at pictures of everyday objects and name them one by one. Minders, advertising drones, apples, and cats. Some of those objects were things not commonly found on Niraya and when she'd hesitated the doctors had gone pale, but in the end she'd been cleared. They told her she was going to be okay.

In time, anyway. She had to lie very still for days yet, moving as little as possible, while a robotic surgeon climbed around her shoulder, cutting away dead tissue with a laser and knitting her bones back together.

Well, she'd had plenty of training in being still, back at the Retreat. She tried to meditate and put herself into a trance of peace.

There was only one problem. People kept coming to annoy her.

Ensign Ehta came first, grabbing her hand and nearly reopening Roan's wound. Tears had brimmed in the marine's eyes and then the smell wafted over Roan and she realized that Ehta was drunk. Ehta kept repeating how glad she was that Roan had made it, how damned lucky they both had been. Roan eventually figured out that Ehta hadn't just come to see how she was doing, that the marine wanted something.

It wasn't difficult to figure out what.

“You saved them,” Roan said. “Nothing that came before matters. You saved the people on that moon.”

“We did,” Ehta told her, and reached for her hand again. “We did good.” She still sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

Elder McRae came by a bit later, after Ensign Ehta left. The elder sat down next to Roan's bunk and watched her with eyes that bore no expression, whatsoever. She did not speak for the longest time.

“I am glad,” she said, finally, “that you'll live.”

“I'm glad Niraya is safe,” Roan told her.

The elder nodded. “You asked my forgiveness, before. You know that isn't something I can give you.”

“Yes,” Roan said. “I think I understand that a little more now. You said I'd chosen my path and that it was up to me to decide if it was the right one. Well, I've decided. I did the right thing. I don't need you to tell me that.”

The elder didn't smile. That would have been a betrayal of her beliefs. Roan thought that maybe, though, deep down, the elder agreed with her. That Roan had chosen the correct path.

That was all she was going to get. It would have to be enough.

Before she left, Roan said one more thing. “I'm glad you survived, too.”

The elder did not respond.

The next visitor was the one she wanted to see the most. Thom came clattering into the medical suite, knocking over a scanner and nearly tripping on a cable that snaked across the floor. He knelt down next to her bunk and stared at her, and cried, and reached for her but then pulled his hands back. He kept smiling. He smiled through the whole visit. He didn't say a word.

There would be plenty of time for words, and for holding hands, and a great deal more later.

Her fourth visitor was Commander Lanoe. He pulled up a chair and sat there, nodding at her. She had no idea what he was thinking, what words were unspooling in his head, but he eventually said, “It worked, huh? Who would believe it.”

“Thank you,” she told him. When the entire galaxy had heard the plea of Niraya and had done nothing more than shrug, he had come to their aid. “Thank you.” She said it several more times.

“Stop that,” he said, eventually.

“I'm…sorry?” she said.

“You fought as hard as any of us. Whatever we accomplished here, you were part of it.”

Then he held out his hand, and she shook it.

“Does this make us squaddies?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said.

Later on, in a room darkened to simulate the middle of the night, Lanoe scrolled through some image files he had stored on his personal minder. He didn't have many, even after three hundred years.

The pictures showed his old squads, typically after a bad fight, but laughing. Throwing rude hand gestures, lounging on top of their battered fighters. Jernigan with his arm around Khoi's waist. Candless and Holt and Amrit in a swimming pool on Ganymede, still wearing their suits, mugging for the camera. Old friends he'd simply stopped calling. Too many years gone by and he'd always been too busy. There were pictures of Lanoe getting medals, getting salutes from admirals. He flipped past those without giving them much of a look. Most of those people were dead now.