The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast (10 page)

“It’s not my fault we’re down here!” the hostage-taker cried, his words falling over each other as they came out too quickly and too loudly. “It was Grassie! She took us down before the rest of us knew she was aiming to land on Europa! It wasn’t my fault!”

“Pal, I don’t care whose fault it was, I just want our people back safe,” Orvis assured him. “We’ll let the locals worry about what to do to this Grassie.”

The man laughed, high-pitched and rapid, the sound unnerving. “We already took care of her! Shoved her out the air lock while she tried to claim she had some plan to get us out of here! It’s all her fault; she wanted to be on Europa, so we gave her to Europa!”

That explained the body outside the ship. “Idiots,” Desjani said in disgusted tones. “They panicked and killed their pilot.”

“They would have had a backup pilot aboard,” Commander Nkosi said. “Or, at least, an autopilot routine so the ship could fly itself. But it was still a very stupid as well as brutal thing to do.”

Gunnery Sergeant Orvis was speaking to the hostage-taker again, still using the same calm, measured tones. “All right. You took care of your pilot. So we got no problems.”

“No . . . no problems?” The criminal sounded bewildered as well as frightened.

“That’s right. You the only one in there with our people? What do you need?”

“What?” The criminal stared at Orvis.

“What do you need? You and me, we’re just doing our jobs, right? Now, me, my job is to get those officers safe and sound. That’s what I want. What do you want? You want a deal?”

“A deal?” The hostage-taker grasped at that like a man in a vacuum grabbing for a survival suit. “Yeah. A deal. I’ll trade you those two.”

“That’s fair,” Orvis said. “Trade them for what? What’s the deal?”

“Uh . . . get me off this rock! That’s the deal! You promise to get me off here along with you, then you let me go, safe, or I kill both of your friends!”

Orvis handed his rifle to a nearby Marine, then held his empty hands up in a nonthreatening way. “That’s it? That’s all you want?”

“Yeah! Promise you’ll get me safe off Europa! In one piece!”

“Sure,” Orvis replied. “We don’t care what happens to you. You got a deal.”

“I’ve got . . . ? That’s it? You don’t have to check with anybody?”

“Hell, no. I got full authority for this,” Orvis assured him. “You let us in there, we get those two officers safe and sound, and we’ll do what you ask.”

Commander Nkosi turned an angry gaze on Geary. “Admiral, you can’t—”

Geary shook his head, his grim expression stopping Nkosi’s words in their tracks. He felt a sickness inside as he realized what Gunny Orvis intended, but no orders reached his lips to stop what would soon happen.
I need to own this, too. I knew it might come to this. It’s my responsibility.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” he told Nkosi.

“He doesn’t,” Desjani said. She didn’t sound upset, just implacable. Geary wondered how many times she had faced similar situations and made similar decisions.

The traitor who had provided a Syndic hypernet key to the Alliance, and who had led the Alliance fleet into an ambush that might have been the death of that entire fleet, had died on this bridge. No one had ever told Geary who had pulled the trigger. But whether or not Tanya herself had executed the man, he realized that she could have.

A child of an endless war, she did what was necessary.

“But your man is promising—” Nkosi began again.

“We were at war for a century with opponents who would lie at the drop of a hat and commit any atrocity,” Desjani interrupted. “We learned to do what we have to do.”

Nkosi stared at her. “But . . . your own honor—”

“Don’t,” Desjani said in her most dangerous voice. “Don’t go there. You have no right to judge us.”

Nkosi looked away, clearly distressed, but he said nothing more.

“You promise? That’s binding?” the hostage-taker was demanding once more.

“Yeah, I promise,” Orvis said in a casual voice. “Yeah, it’s binding.” Unseen by the hostage-taker, but visible to Geary and the other watchers who could see activity on Orvis’s helmet display, Orvis tagged the image of the criminal, then highlighted Corporal Maya’s name. Almost instantly, Maya’s acknowledgment glowed green on Orvis’s display.

“Look,” Orvis pressed, “you’ve only got so much life support left, and the longer any of us hang around this ice ball, the more risk we’re all running. Let’s get this done, all right?”

The hostage-taker hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Remember. You promised. I got a record of it.”

“That’s fine. I got a record of it, too.”

A low thunk sounded as the bolts holding the hatch retracted, then the hatch swung open. Atmosphere puffed out as pressure inside the bridge equalized with what was left inside the rest of the spacecraft. Orvis entered slowly, still unarmed, his hands once again held out as far as they could be and get through the hatch. A few other Marines followed behind him, their weapons pointed toward the deck or the overhead, everyone moving in a relaxed way. Last of all came Corporal Maya, her weapon pointed slightly away from the hostage-taker.

The criminal obviously still didn’t trust the Marines. He had the pistol barrel pressed against Lieutenant Castries’s forehead. Castries was dressed in a shapeless coverall and propped into a seat. Her eyes were closed and her body slack.

“Drugged,” Dr. Nasr told Geary. “If she were merely unconscious, her respiration would be more rapid.”

Lieutenant Yuon lay on the deck next to the chair holding Castries, unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his own breathing.

His attention focused on Orvis and the other Marines in the front rank, the hostage-taker did not notice Maya’s weapon shifting slightly as she took aim. “How are we going to—?” he started to say.

At such close range, the shot and impact seemed to occur simultaneously. The hostage-taker jerked as the energy pulse from Corporal Maya’s weapon blasted all the way through his head and impacted on one of the screens behind him.

Orvis stepped forward quickly, grasping the pistol and pulling it away from the limp hand of the dead criminal as the body dropped to the deck under Europa’s gentle gravity.

“Stupid git,” Maya commented conversationally. “Even the Syndics aren’t dumb enough to fall for that anymore.”

“That’s because the Syndics taught us that trick,” Orvis said with brutal directness.

“Gunny, we couldn’t take him back! The only way to keep him from killing these two squids was to tell him what he wanted to hear.”

“It was still a false promise. Remind me when we get back to the ship to apologize to my ancestors and beg forgiveness for the lie.”

“Sure, Gunny,” Maya said, her voice now subdued. “Won’t be the first time, will it?”

“Hell, no. Wish it could be the last.” All traces of gentle persuasion dropped from Gunnery Sergeant Orvis’s voice. “All right, you apes! Get them into the spare armor, on the double! Minimize physical contact with them until they’re sealed in!”

“Minimize . . . what, Gunny?” a private asked.

“Don’t touch them!”

“How are we going to get them into the armor without touching them, Gunny?”

“Make sure you don’t touch them when you touch them, that’s how. Now get it done!”

As those aboard
Dauntless
watched the Marines gingerly sealing the unconscious bodies of Castries and Yuon into the spare battle armor, Commander Nkosi shook his head. “If I had done that, I would be going to jail.”

“Lucky you had us here to do it, then, isn’t it?” Desjani replied bitingly.

“This isn’t over,” Geary said to break up the painful debate. “We still have to recover them.”

Nkosi licked his lips before speaking again. “Sir, you must understand that if my physician does not certify that your Marines’ armor has been decontaminated, my ships will fire upon those men and women before your ship can recover them. My presence here will not stop my ships from acting as I ordered.”

“I would expect no less,” Geary said. “So far, your physician seems satisfied, though.” He did not bother saying what everyone knew, that
Dauntless
would not sit passively while the quarantine ships attacked Alliance Marines. “We’ve dealt with that stealth craft for you,” he reminded Nkosi.

Orvis was checking the seals on the armor now holding Lieutenants Castries and Yuon. “Looks good. Let’s go. Pull out, everybody.”

As the other Marines began moving, Maya and three of her squad carrying the two suits of armor with the lieutenants in them, one Marine called out a plaintive question. “Sarge? What about these guys? The four in this berthing compartment?”

“Leave them,” Hsien snapped.

“But—”

“Just leave them!”

The Marine moved away fast, as if trying to flee the compartment where the last four criminals were still alive. The other Marines went quickly, too, clearing passageways rapidly, past the dead criminals who had fought at the air locks and going out through the temporary air lock as swiftly as they could.

Orvis waited on the ice, counting as he watched Marines come out and jump from the air lock to land nearby. “That’s everybody.”

“Gunny?” the private who had been guarding the four prisoners asked.

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Orvis said. “We can’t help them. They did this to themselves.”

“Gunny,” another private said, “that ship is a mess now. It’s gonna be unlivable in—”

Orvis pointed toward the wrecked ship. “We left the weapons dropped by the guys we killed inside. Some of them still work. And we left the med supplies and drugs undisturbed. There’s more than enough drugs for them to knock themselves out and not feel a thing when the end comes. That’s the best we can do for those four who are still alive. You understand? That’s the best we can do. Unless you want to climb back in and finish them yourself.”

“No. No, Gunny. I got too many nightmares as it is.”

“You and me both. Now line up. We jump in sequence. Check your jets. Put everything you got into the jumps, and your jets will kick in automatically as you clear the surface.”

The Marines formed a loose column on the surface of Europa, most of them looking upward to where Jupiter loomed. No one looked down at the hard, dirty ice under their feet. “Follow the drill,” Orvis cautioned. “Three-minute intervals. You screw up, and even I can’t save you. Maya, those two officers still out?”

“Yeah, Gunny. Must be nice to sleep late, huh?”

“Funny. You and the others with the officers slave their armor to yours, so they’ll automatically jump along with you.”

“Got it. All right, Gunny, their armor is in zombie mode.”

Geary looked toward Desjani, who was studying her display. “Are we in position?”

“We’re ready. Shuttles, stand by.”

“Gunnery Sergeant Orvis, we’re ready for you.”

“That’s it,” Orvis announced to his Marines. “Ready? Begin count. One.”

The first Marine in the column, his knees already flexed, straightened in a convulsive leap, the power of the armor and the weak gravity combining to hurl him high upward even before the jet assists cut in and yanked him away from Europa with startling speed.

Three minutes later, a second Marine jumped. Then a third, a fourth . . .

Geary watched their progress on his display, a string of shapes rising from Europa. It struck him suddenly that these were the first humans to leave that cursed moon since before the human-created plague struck long centuries ago. From this high up, he could see one of the domed cities that had held nothing but the dead during those centuries, many of the solar-powered lights still functioning even after so long to create a false image of life and warmth in a place that held neither.

As the first Marine rose into orbit, one of
Dauntless
’s shuttles snagged him with a tether that shot out and latched onto one leg. The shuttle brought the Marine into position near
Dauntless
and waited.

Desjani touched a comm control. “Senior Chief Tarrini, target is one Marine. Make sure you get everything.”

One of
Dauntless
’s hell lances fired. The particle beam, which at full strength would have easily punched completely through the Marine’s battle armor, had been carefully adjusted to put out just enough energy to flay the armor of its outer layer. As the armor jerked under the impact of the stream of charged particles, Geary heard the Marine inside grunt under the force of the blows transmitted through the armor. Stress data appeared on his helmet view, along with warnings as damage rapidly accumulated to everything on the surface of the armor. Then the image and sound cut off as the last external comm relays on the armor evaporated under the lash of the hell lance.

The shuttle used the tether to rotate the Marine carefully, ensuring that the weapon played over the entire surface of the armor.

“How does it look?” Geary asked Dr. Nasr.

Dr. Palden answered before Nasr could. “That spot needs another hit. And there. What about under the tether clasp?”

“That will be hit when the shuttle releases the tether,” Nasr said, his tone of voice uncharacteristically short.

“Proceed,” Dr. Palden said grudgingly.

Several seconds later, the two doctors gave their approval. The shuttle ejected the used tether so that it fell toward Europa, then shot out another to grab the next Marine, while the second shuttle swung over to pick up the first Marine. Geary blew out a gasp of air as he looked at the heat readings on the outside of the first Marine’s battle armor. “I sure hope Dr. Nasr and Gunnery Sergeant Orvis were right about the Marines inside the armor being able to endure that.”

Desjani, who was beginning to relax, smiled thinly at him. “Doctors make mistakes sometimes, but gunnery sergeants? Doesn’t happen.”

As the next Marine was pummeled by the hell lance, the first was hauled into the second shuttle, where everyone paused while the doctors carefully examined their data. “He is fully decontaminated,” Nasr said.

Dr. Palden scowled as she checked the same data, saying nothing.

“There is a person inside that armor,” Dr. Nasr finally prodded her.