“Major?”
“Yeah, Glitch.” Darcy blinked herself awake from a catnap, hoping this wasn’t even worse news. “What’s up?”
“We’ve received a message. It was sent in the clear, but it’s some kind of code. I don’t know what it means.”
“Relay it to me.” She listened to Rob Geary’s voice.
“Nakamura says hello.”
Nakamura? As in Lochan? But he was at Kosatka.
Unless he’d arrived at Glenlyon. Why would Lochan come here?
For only one reason. He’d brought help. Good old Lochan, the guy who thought of himself as a failure at everything, but had a way of coming through when it mattered. Mele smiled with relief. “Glitch, try to get through to the other commanders. Tell them help has arrived.” Why hadn’t Rob Geary just said that? Because the enemy might not realize yet that whatever had shown up was on Glenlyon’s side? “The enemy apparently doesn’t know help for us has shown up. When they figure it out, we may see a burst of activity, either a sudden last-ditch attack or a sudden pullback. Got that?”
“Help is here,” Glitch recited, “the enemy may not know, sudden enemy activity possible when they figure it out.”
“Right. After you get that out see if you can get me a decent link to Captain Batra.”
She finally checked the “local” time on the facility, which was slaved to that of the primary (and still only) city on the planet below. 0500. Five in the morning. Mele let out a gasp of exhausted laughter. Normally 0500 would be when reveille sounded, time to get out of your bunk, hit the deck, and get ready for a new working day. This was probably the first time in several days that she’d actually woken up at about the “normal” time.
Mele moved carefully through the cramped compartment they were huddled in, the darkness barely illuminated by a nightglow setting on a small light on the side of her armored glove. The medic, Corporal Okubo, was already awake and on sentry, eyeing a sensor screen whose glow marked his face with the distorted reflections of warning symbols. Mele lightly touched each Marine still asleep. Corporal Penny Lamar and four privates. All that were left in this group after a few more encounters with enemy patrols. “Up and at ’em. It’s another glorious day in the Marines.”
“Oo-rah,” Corporal Lamar grumbled in a whisper.
Sergeant Giddings was still working on getting the message out. Mele waited until all of the other Marines left with her were awake, sitting up and yawning, bleary-eyed with fatigue that the rest period hadn’t done nearly enough to fix. “Here’s some news before breakfast. The space squids got word to me that help has arrived.” Everyone’s eyes jerked to greater alertness, sharpening their gaze on her. “I don’t know how much, or how long it’ll be before it gets here. But sooner or later those apes we’re fighting will also get the word. We need to be ready for whatever they do, and need to keep them distracted as much as we can.”
“Major?” Sergeant Giddings held up a fiber link. “I’ve got Lieutenant Paratnam. He says he needs to talk to you about Captain Batra.”
“You guys eat while I handle this.” Mele took the link and plugged it in, the green light that would mark a solid connection flickering instead of staying steady. “What’s up? Where’s Batra?”
“I haven’t been able to contact him for the last eight hours,” Paratnam said. “Not even momentary burst signals. I’m assessing that he’s . . . no longer active.”
She heard enough in Paratnam’s voice, the weariness, the anger, the stubborn determination, for an image of his haggard face to appear in her mind’s eye. “How many did Batra have with him?”
“Nine, last I knew. We’ve had no contact with any of them. According to Captain Batra’s orders, since we can’t—”
Mele waited as the comm status light flickered red, yellow, and then green again, the tiny illumination casting shades of color on the Marines huddled in the dark compartment. “Say again all after ‘Batra’s orders.’ I lost you.”
“Um . . . per Captain Batra’s orders I’m assuming command of the ground forces element.”
“Okay.” She resisted the urge to add “congratulations.” That’d be humor too dark for even a situation like this. “You got the word that help’s on the way?”
“Yes. Any details on that?” Paratnam pleaded.
“That’s what I’m trying to get. Do you have anyone able to tap into surviving navigational systems on the facility or see Saber directly?”
“Sergeant Savak’s group was close to the outer edge last I knew.”
“Try to contact her and see if she can call Saber. I need any details Savak can get about whatever help has arrived and when it’s going to get close enough to help us kill stuff.”
“Understood,” Paratnam said. “I hope it’s a lot and I hope it’s soon.”
“Agreed. Wait.” Mele looked over at Corporal Okubo, still on sentry duty, who gestured urgently at his sensor readouts.
“Company heading this way,” Okubo whispered. “We’re getting hits on movement. Estimated ten to fifteen hostiles.”
“Got it. Lieutenant Paratnam, I gotta go. I’ll try to reconnect as soon as a local threat situation is resolved. Darcy, out.” Mele looked at her Marines, who were hastily shoveling the last crumbs of food bars into the feed ports on their lower helmets and readying their weapons. “Anybody got any mines left? No? How about grenades?” Everyone shook their heads.
Ten to fifteen enemies, and she had eight counting herself. The odds weren’t too bad.
Unless the estimate was too low.
Mele rubbed her forehead, tired, very tired, of running, and feeling reluctant to avoid a fight that would help wear down the enemy a little more. But she was in command of this entire battle. Choosing to risk an engagement that didn’t have to be fought would be both reckless and irresponsible. “Glitch, Lamar, we need a new hide hole that isn’t where that patrol will find us.”
The sergeant and the corporal huddled over Giddings’s schematics of the facility near their location while Mele conducted a count of the ammunition everyone had left. That wasn’t great, either. The last supply cache they’d tried to use had been emptied out earlier, probably by another group of defenders since the location hadn’t been booby-trapped the way it would be if the enemy had found it. “If we get into a fight, don’t waste rounds,” she cautioned her Marines. “If I catch anybody spraying shots without aiming I’ll make you regret the day you joined the Marines.”
Private Ford raised his hand. “Major, with all due respect, the last few weeks I’ve kind of already been regretting that.”
She laughed along with the others. As long as they could still make jokes they’d still be able to fight.
Sergeant Giddings pointed to his right. “There’s a spot about a hundred meters that way.”
“It looks okay, Major,” Corporal Lamar agreed.
“Let’s get going, Lamar. Glitch, stay with me.”
Corporal Lamar eased cautiously out into the hallway, gazing around before beckoning the others to follow. “Ford, take point.”
“Ford, take point,” Ford grumbled. “I think I’ll let myself get shot again.”
“Is it malingering if you let the enemy shoot you instead of shooting yourself?” Private MacKinder wondered.
“Yes,” Corporal Lamar said. “Now shut up. Mac, you take the rear.” Lamar followed Ford as he headed along the hall away from where their sensors warned that the enemy patrol was approaching.
“Are we still tracking them?” Mele asked Corporal Okubo, who was just in front of her, while Giddings was just behind.
“Yes, Major, they’re—wait. It looks like they just changed their path. They’re moving fast.”
“Toward us?” Mele demanded, peering down the darkened hallway. “Talk to me!”
“No! Sort of right angles to us.”
A sudden change of route. Moving fast. “They might’ve spotted some of our other people. Lamar! Change the route to get closer to that patrol. Keep it careful.”
“Yes, ma’am. Ford, have you got readings on them?”
“Uh . . . yeah. Now we’re trying to catch them?”
“Yes. Go.” Ford eased up to a corner, then edged around it, the others following.
Less than two minutes later, sudden crashes erupted ahead along the path the enemy patrol had taken, the sounds of shots echoing and rebounding from walls, ceilings, and floors. “That’s less than twenty meters off. Let’s go!” Mele said. “Our guys probably need help.”
Much faster now, running up a stair, out into a hall blocked only a few meters down, into a room, the sound of shots growing louder but the exact locations still hard to grasp because of the echoing, out the second door into another hall, and—
Ford jerked to a halt, waving to the others to take cover. Mele kept going until she could see what the lead Marine had spotted.
Two enemy soldiers, crouched at a corner, leaning out to fire carefully to their left. Concentrating on whomever they were fighting, their backs to Mele’s small group, the enemy hadn’t yet noticed the danger behind them. “Lamar, you’re my best shot. Pick the second best. Take out those two fast and clean.”
“Got it, ma’am. Mac, you take the shorter one. Fire on three.” Lamar and Mac aimed carefully. “One . . . two . . . three.” Both weapons barked. One enemy soldier fell limply to the floor, while the other staggered and began to turn. Lamar and Mac both fired again, the shots knocking the soldier back into the hallway.
The other firing nearby paused.
“Get down,” Mele ordered.
Lamar was already moving, snagging a grenade off the closest enemy soldier.
Holes appeared in the wall to their left as someone fired through it, the shots dancing up and down and over, but not going low enough to hit the Marines prone on the deck.
Enemy soldiers suddenly boiled out behind the Marines.
Lamar pitched the grenade into them as Mele and her Marines fired back. An enemy grenade went off too close to Mele for comfort, but her armor stopped the shrapnel. Steadying her aim, she put a shot through the faceplate of a soldier charging at the Marines.
Firing ceased as the Marines searched in vain for more targets, the sensors on their battle armor no longer warning of movement except for that of an enemy soldier twitching, unable to rise. Studying the remnants of the fight, Mele saw one of her Marines lying limp where the grenade had tossed him. “Medic!”
“On it,” Corporal Okubo said.
As the medic scrambled over to the injured private, Lamar positioned the remaining three Marines to cover against any more enemy soldiers showing up.
In the aftermath of the noise of battle, the sudden silence felt strange. The dark interior of the facility was pitch black once more except where the light Corporal Okubo was using cast some illumination. Infrared sight only made the darkness and the battered walls around them seem stranger and more alien. Mele checked the sensor displays on her armor, spotting fading vibrations that spoke of heavy footsteps, soldiers in battle armor, retreating rapidly. “Those ground apes were shooting at somebody.” Despite the risk of the transmission being detected by other enemy forces, she boosted power and called on the command circuit. “Any Marines out there?”
“I’ve got something to the left,” Sergeant Giddings said, checking his own readings. “I think it’s friendly ID transmissions. Real low power. Close by.”
“Anybody out there,” Mele sent again. “Identify yourself. We don’t have a lot of patience or time!”
A response finally came, the transmission weak and filled with static. “Don’t shoot! We’re coming in! We’re force recon!”
“Ford, Mac, cover them,” Lamar ordered.
“I see ’em,” Ford said, gazing ahead cautiously. “Four of our ground apes if their IFF is real.”
“Make certain they’re ours!”
“Yes, Major,” Lamar said. She stepped out, weapon at the ready. “Ford, keep them covered. Check ’em, Mac.”
Private MacKinder scuttled to the four new soldiers, checking over their armor and systems. “They’re ours,” Mac reported after a moment. “Ground force recon.”
“Get them over here with us,” Mele ordered.
“Major, we’ve got faint movement indicators all around,” Glitch reported. “Growing in intensity. The enemy’s concentrating toward the sounds of this fight.”
“We’ve gotta move,” Mele said. “Everybody—”
“No can do, Major,” Corporal Okubo said. He was kneeling beside the wounded Marine, working fast even as he talked. “Private Luk got hit bad. If we move this Marine, he dies.”
Mele paused, looking over at the other figure lying near the medic, an enemy soldier. Her helmet providing air still concealed her face, but half of her combat armor had been pulled off and plenty of blood marked the skin suit worn under the armor. Mele could tell that Okubo had taken the time to at least stabilize her for a moment. “What about that one?”
Okubo managed to shrug while still working to save the life of the wounded Marine. “Might live if we move her now. I doubt it, though.”
“Give me your recommendation,” Mele said.
“We leave them here and I keep working on them.” Okubo glanced at her for just a moment. “Ma’am, I’ve got to stay here or they both die.”
The big picture. Focus on the big picture. She couldn’t afford to let what might be the last medic in her forces be captured in order to save a single friendly life. And the loss of a single additional enemy life, while regrettable, wasn’t cause to sacrifice her medic. This was war, after all. It was her job to win this fight, and every Marine and ground forces soldier was expendable when it came to that.
Mele glanced down at the wounded Marine.
To hell with the big picture.
“Okay, Corporal Okubo. Stay. Have you got a weapon?”
“Uh, a sidearm.”
“Give.” Mele held out her hand. “You’ll be safer if you’re not armed when they get here.”
The medic paused one of his hands’ work long enough to reach around, flip the quick-release fitting on the sidearm holster, and pass it to Mele.
“Turn on your medic badges,” she ordered.
Okubo nodded quickly. Mele saw bright red symbols glow to life on his shoulders, on the forehead of his battle armor helmet, and between his shoulders on the back of his armor.
“Give us a good minute after we clear this spot and then light off your medic beacon, too. Understand?”
“Yes, Major.”
“Good.” Mele reached out to grip Okubo’s shoulder for a moment. “Save them, and keep yourself safe, Marine.”
“You got it. Thank you, Major.”
Mele stepped back, her eyes sweeping what little could be seen of the surrounding area. Her four remaining Marines, and the four figures in ground forces armor. Only four. “Are you apes on your own?”
One soldier tried to answer, stumbling over the words. “Uh . . . we . . . ah . . .”
There were times for gentle methods, and there were times like this. “Spit it out, soldier!”
“Yes, ma’am! We’re all that’s left of our group. Corporal Singh was leading us, but he just got killed when they jumped us.” A mix of sorrow, exhaustion, and despair made the soldier’s voice sound weird, his words hard to understand.
But Mele got the important parts. “You’re with us now. That’s Corporal Lamar. Do what she says. Or what I say. Glitch, have you found a way from here to that place we were going to hole up?”
“Yes, Major,” Sergeant Giddings said, pointing down the hallway. “That way.”
“Lamar!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lamar said. “Ford!”
“Yeah. Point.” But Private Ford didn’t hesitate as the warnings on the Marine sensors grew more urgent.
The group of now only five Marines, counting Mele, and the four ground forces soldiers headed off down the darkened hallway for a short distance before Ford darted to one side into a narrow access passage. Barely five meters along that, he paused to flip open a panel, leading the way onto the stairs beyond it. Mele made sure the panel closed tightly behind her before following the others.
“Freeze!” Giddings said, his whisper sounding loud over the command circuit, one hand coming up to make the sign for the same command.
Everyone in the small group stopped moving. Mele felt herself breathing slowly and shallowly even though that sound wouldn’t carry through the battle armor.
She felt the thump of feet passing overhead, along a hallway that crossed over the shaft holding the stairs, heading toward where the enemy patrol had been decimated.
Mele hoped that the enemy wouldn’t simply fire when they got there and saw Corporal Okubo. That could happen. Their minds wouldn’t register the red medic symbols glowing, instead showing them an enemy, and fingers on triggers would twitch. Oddly enough, AI-controlled weapons could do the same thing, ignoring clear signs that the target was a noncombatant, or even friendly, and firing anyway. Something to do with complex decision trees and options spontaneously collapsing, a code monkey had once told her. Humans probably accidentally shot their friends for different reasons, but the result was the same for whoever ended up being the target.
But the enemy battle armor should register the medic beacon. Hopefully. If Okubo had remembered to activate it while trying to keep both that Marine and the enemy soldier alive.
The tremors from the footfalls overhead fading, they set off again, reaching a landing with a door that led to another hall, then a room, and inside that a hidden access panel that allowed them to crawl into a maintenance corridor whose usual entrance had been sealed.
“Everybody rest. Lamar, post a sentry. Glitch, find me a link to Lieutenant Paratnam or Sergeant Savak or the Saber.”
“What if I contact Gunny Moon?”
“Get me anybody!” Mele sat down, back against a wall, trying to plan what to do when she didn’t know how many forces she had left or where they were, or how many enemies were left or where they were.
“Major?” Mac came by, pointing to the wall. “We’ve got live power outlets.”
“Bonus.” Mele plugged in her battle armor so the systems could recharge. “How can we still have power here?”
“Separate battery backups. There are different battery banks for the equipment on the facility, but since we pulled off what equipment we could and shut the rest down, there hasn’t been any drain on the batteries since primary power went down. If we find a battery bank that hasn’t been drained yet, we’re good. I think these might be the facility stabilization systems.”
“Facility stabilization? Any idea what happens when the batteries for those systems die?”
Private MacKinder shook his head. “I guess when the facility stabilization stuff shuts down, the facility goes unstable.”
“Thanks, Mac,” Mele said, knowing her sarcasm probably wouldn’t register on the tired Marine.
A couple of minutes later, Corporal Lamar eased up toward Mele. “Major, my suit’s reporting damage to your armor.”
“Damage?” Mele remembered the enemy grenade, checking her side. “Yeah. Got nicked, but it didn’t penetrate.”
Lamar knelt to examine the damage, playing a dim light on it. “It could worsen if it’s not repaired. We’re out of liquid weld. Mac! See if there’s any duct tape in that maintenance locker. No, wait! Check that maintenance locker for booby traps, then see if there’s any duct tape in it.”
“Got it.” A couple of minutes later, Private MacKinder got the door to the locker open, rummaged inside, and then emerged with a partial roll of duct tape. “We’re saved!”
“Shut up, you idiot,” Lamar said, laughing, as she took the roll. She worked for a few moments, tearing off strips of duct tape and reinforcing the damaged area on Mele’s armor. “There you go, Major. Good as new. Almost.” Lamar paused. “I just thought of something.”
“What’s that?”
“What if someone made a weapon that homed in on duct tape?”
“That’d be the end of life as we know it,” Mele said. “Don’t give people ideas.”
“I won’t!” Lamar looked down at her arm, the limb hidden by the battle armor covering it. “I got a bad scrape once and Doc Okubo slapped some duct tape and gauze on it. Do you think he’s going to be okay, ma’am?”
“Yeah,” Mele said, trying to sound as if there wasn’t any doubt of that. “As far as we can tell, the guys we’re fighting are taking prisoners. Okubo had his medic lights on and should have turned on his beacon as well once we were gone. He’ll have been able to keep Luk alive, and be able to treat the other prisoners the enemy has taken, so that’s sort of a good thing.”
“Kind of funny a guy named Luk getting hit that bad, huh?”
“Well, he didn’t get hit bad until now, and Doc Okubo was there to help him, so maybe his name still fits.”
“I bet you’re right, Major.” Lamar looked about her as if the dark and the walls would yield to her vision. “I wish we knew where they were holding the prisoners. Maybe we could get to them. Free ’em with an all-out hostage rescue and recovery.”
“The enemy won’t be holding prisoners on this facility,” Mele said, shaking her head. “They’ll probably have taken the prisoners to the freighter. Easier to guard them there.”
“Maybe we can find out for sure,” Giddings said. He’d been listening, and began fiddling with controls on his equipment. “If Doc Okubo had his medic beacon lit off. Those have a lot of power to cut through jamming during a fight. If the enemy didn’t remember to have him shut that off . . . yeah. There it is. Bearing . . . distance . . . that’s got to be that ship. The prisoners are definitely on it.”
“That’s good to know. Not that we can do anything about it,” Mele said. “The freighter will be a problem for the space squids. They can—” Memories from the fighting at Kosatka abruptly forced their way into her mind. “Oh, crap. Glitch! I need comms to Saber now! Get me a line! Anything you can find.”
It took time. Giddings had to avoid attempts by the enemy to spot and trace his tries at finding an intact line out, and twice everyone had to freeze while enemy patrols passed close enough to create worries they might spot the faintest vibration from the Marines.
But finally Giddings gave her a go signal and Mele saw her comm light glow green. “Saber. Am I talking to Saber?”
The reply sounded wary. “Saber is the ship. You’re talking to me. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Major Darcy, commander of the defending forces on the facility. Who the hell are you?”
“Uh . . . huh? I . . . uh . . . Petty Officer Tork . . . engineering watch. Is a major like a lieutenant?”
“A major is like a commander—”
“I’m sorry, ma’am! But this circuit isn’t supposed to link to outside calls. Oh, did you come in through the system status net? That shouldn’t be active with only one ship out here. I’ll—”
“Never mind! I need to talk to Commodore Geary. Right now. This moment. Before we lose this link! Can you patch me through?”
“I . . . I’ll tell someone! Hang on, Commander!”
Waiting for the next several seconds took all of her willpower.
Rob Geary’s voice came on the line so abruptly it startled her. “Mele? Is that you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You scared the hell out of one of my petty officers. Did you get my message?”
“Yes, sir! Listen, I’ve got to say this quick before we lose this link. We know the enemy has taken prisoners of some of my Marines and some ground forces soldiers. We’ve got indications that those prisoners are being held on the freighter. If that freighter runs, while it has some of our people as prisoners aboard it along with enemy soldiers trying to get out of here, can you stop it without killing our own people?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. “That might be a problem. If the freighter was on its own, we could match vectors and take out parts of it, but even then we couldn’t know if prisoners had been placed near any of those pieces of equipment to keep us from firing on them. If the enemy cruiser and destroyer remain as escorts, we’d have to make high-speed runs instead of matching vectors with the freighter. If we’re moving that fast, it’s very difficult to aim to hit just one or two particular spots on a ship, even if we did know exactly where on the freighter our own people are located and tried to avoid hitting those areas.”
“What options would we have?” Mele asked. “Anything better than those two?”
“Unless I can make those two enemy warships go away, my options would be to risk killing some, or possibly all, of the prisoners in order to stop the freighter, or to let the freighter go. If the warships run and leave the freighter, I can try taking out its control deck or engineering, but if the enemy places prisoners in those locations, I won’t be able to fire without killing them.”
“That’s it? There’s nothing else you can do?”
“Mele, that’s one of the reasons we carry Marines. To give us more options. Only I don’t have Marines. You’ve got them all, and for good reason.”
“Dammit, sir, I can’t take that freighter! It’d be a death trap! As long as the enemy . . .”
“Major Darcy?” Rob asked. “Do we still have a link or did I lose you?”
“I’m still here.” Mele hesitated, trying to sort through her thoughts. “Can you keep them off me?”
“I’m not sure what you—”
“If I capture that freighter, can you keep the enemy warships off me?”
A pause. “When?” Rob Geary finally asked.
“At the earliest, another twenty-four hours. How long is it until our reinforcements get here?”
“About three more days. It’s four destroyers, Mele. From Eire, Benten, and Kosatka.”
“Four—?! When did Eire and Benten join the war?”
“You’ll have to ask your friend Lochan about that. I’m assuming he made it happen. We’ve also got Adowa and Catalan as allies.”
For a moment Mele was lost for words. “Cool,” she finally got out.
“That gives us superiority in space. Enough firepower to destroy both of the enemy warships. If the enemy warships try to escape, and I’m sure they will, they’ll have to start running within thirty-six hours or the four new destroyers will be able to alter their vectors to cut across the star system and catch the enemy before they can reach the jump point. The new warships aren’t broadcasting IDs, so the enemy might still think these are reinforcements for them. But that’s only going to last so long before the enemy warships realize they’re not getting the right answers from our new friends. I expect the enemy warships to bolt in about twenty-four hours, and I’ll be chasing them when they do, trying to slow them down. So that’s your timeline, Mele.”
“Twenty-four hours,” she repeated. “And they’ll take the freighter with them?”
“I don’t think so. It’s possible the enemy warships will choose to sacrifice themselves to protect the freighter, but that’s not what a careerist does when the chips are down, and the enemy commander has been acting like a careerist who wants to protect his own hide above all else. It’s already too late for that freighter to escape with them. It accelerates too slowly. The only chance the enemy warships will have to escape is if they abandon the freighter, and the only chance the freighter will have is if it has hostages to prevent us from firing on it.”
Mele nodded to herself. “Meaning we’ll have a chance to capture and hold the freighter if we hit it after the enemy warships head for home. I can’t set things up in less than nine hours anyway. Okay, we’re—” Mele heard a rapidly repeated snapping sound over the circuit. “Commodore? Are we still connected?” Nothing.
“They spotted the transmission and spot jammed it,” Sergeant Giddings said.
“Did they trace it? Do we have to move?”
“I don’t think so, but we should move in a little while anyway.”
Mele sat back against the metal behind her, thinking. “I need to talk to Ninja. How are your comms with the surface?”
“I can get you a link. It’s harder for the enemy to spot that because they’re not in the line of sight between us and the surface. When do you need it?”
“Five minutes ago.”
Half an hour passed, while Mele tried not to scream at Giddings to get her the connection now.
It did give her time to think. There hadn’t been any sign that the enemy soldiers were withdrawing to the freighter, which would be the only smart thing at this point. Whatever else she’d learned about the enemy ground forces commander, he or she wasn’t stupid. They’d know they should be pulling back, and fast. So, why weren’t they?
Maybe because they hadn’t been told about the four new destroyers. Maybe because the enemy warship commander didn’t want a lot of soldiers clamoring to be picked up before the warships bolted for safety. Mele had been warned about that as a private in the Marines back on the Old Colony world Franklin. “Never count on the space squids. When it comes down to supporting the Marines or running to save themselves, the squids will always look out for themselves.”
Rob Geary hadn’t been like that. She’d forgotten that some squids supposedly thought like that. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe it was just Marines not trusting anyone else any more than they had to. But the enemy hadn’t impressed her as being the sort to play straight with their troops. More like being willing to cut their losses anytime things looked bad.
If the enemy ground forces commander hadn’t been told that everything was about to go to hell, they wouldn’t realize how much the situation had changed for the defenders.
“Major? I got Ninja’s line. Voice only.”
“Great.” Mele hit the alert command repeatedly to tell someone at the other end that she was trying to connect. “Hello, hello.”
A familiar, and very youthful, voice answered. “Who are you? Where’s your picture?”
“It’s Aunt Mele,” she told Rob’s little girl. “I need—”
“Hi, Aunt Mele!”
“Hi. I’m calling on business. Where’s your mom?”
“Just a sec! Mommy! Aunt Mele wants you to hack somebody!”
Mele waited for a few seconds that felt like minutes until she heard Ninja’s voice, sounding worn-out. “I’m already hacking for all I’m worth, for what good it’s doing.”
“Can you—”
“No! I haven’t been able to get in!”
“The freighter.”
“What about the freighter?”
“Can you get me and several other people onto the freighter?”
Ninja’s reply took a moment. “Right now?”
“No. About twenty-four hours from now.”
“You mean physically? You mean the freighter the enemy came in on? You want to sneak aboard?”
“Yes!”
“I thought you had to stay on the orbital facility to defend it.”
Mele shook her head before realizing that Ninja couldn’t see the gesture. “Not anymore. We won. The soldiers we’re fighting don’t know that yet, though. Which is good. It gives me a chance to grab control of that freighter before they can use it to try to escape. The rest of my people on the station can hold out until the enemy soldiers have to surrender, which won’t be long.”
“Oh. Got it. So you need to get aboard the freighter. Yeah, I can do that.”
“That’s great!” Mele said. “I need—”
“Almost,” Ninja added. “I can almost do that. It’s just . . . it involves spoofing enemy sensors using a worm . . . but it’s got to be perfect, you know? Any discrepancies and the sensors tag it and the enemy takes a close look using their eyes and . . . wait a minute.”
“I haven’t got a minute.”
“Do you look as bad as you sound?”
Mele stared into the darkness, trying to come up with an apt reply. “Probably. We’re a little short on mirrors, but that’s probably just as well.”
“What about your outfits? Your armor? Is that messed up?”
“You mean damaged? Yeah. Everyone’s armor has damage at this point.”
“What about the enemy?” Ninja demanded. “Does their armor have lots of damage on the outside?”
“Every one of them that I’ve seen,” Mele said. “Why does that matter?”
“Because I can tell the worm to tell the sensors that any inconsistencies or anomalies they see are just damage to the armor! The sensors will still see things inconsistent with friendly armor, but it’ll assume those things are because of damage because I’ll tell them to do that! Why didn’t I think of that before?”
“I don’t know,” Mele said. “How long will this take?”
“When do you need it again?”
“I need to hit the freighter in twenty-four hours. That’s when our space squids say the enemy warships will have abandoned their soldiers here, but before the enemy soldiers have figured that out.”
“Uh-huh. So you need the worm in time to insert it in the enemy systems and give it time to spread. Ummm . . . I’ll try to get it to you in another couple of hours. Maybe.”
Mele sighed, resigning herself to the need to wait for something she hadn’t expected to have a chance at ever getting at all. “Okay. We’ll try to punch a line through to you again in a couple of hours. Sergeant Giddings is giving me looks that say I need to end this call before the enemy fixes on us.”
“I’ll get you that worm, Mele. And stop calling my husband a space squid.”
“It’s a term Marines use to show their admiration for sailors. Honest. See ya.” Mele broke the call, knowing that Ninja would understand the abrupt hang-up.
After spending another moment gazing into the dark to order her thoughts, Mele called over the local command circuit. “Giddings. Lamar.”
“Right here,” Giddings said.
Lamar hustled over, settling next to her.
“Alternate command circuit two,” Mele said, waiting until both of her noncommissioned officers gave her the thumbs-up to confirm they were on the new circuit. “Here’s the deal. Glitch has confirmed that the prisoners the enemy has taken are on that freighter. We can be sure of that. Once the enemy realizes that four destroyers just came in on our side—”
“Four destroyers?” Lamar blurted out.
“Yeah,” Mele said, trying not to let fatigue and stress make her impatient. “Sorry I didn’t tell you that. That’ll give the space squids five destroyers counting our own, which I’m told is real good odds. But if that freighter heads for home with our people aboard as prisoners, the squids will face the choice of either trying to knock out the freighter knowing they’ll probably kill at least some of our own people, or letting the freighter go to ensure our people don’t get killed.”
“That’s all they can do?” Giddings asked.
“That’s all they can do,” Mele said. “Which means the Marines have to get the job done. We have to get aboard that freighter and take control of it before it pulls away.”
“Five of us?” Lamar said.
“We’ve also got the four ground forces guys,” Mele said. “Look, we don’t have to control the whole freighter. We just have to grab their control deck and the power core controls compartment. Engineering control. We’ve practiced doing this, boarding freighters and taking them under our control. This’ll be just like that.”
“But there’ll be all those enemy soldiers nearby,” Giddings said. “Won’t they come charging in to take back control?”
“We’ve got four more destroyers coming! Plus Saber. We tell those enemy ground apes that the freighter can’t outrun those destroyers, which is true, and their escort warships are about to get blown away, also true, and if those ground apes maybe want to survive instead of dying futile and meaningless deaths, they’d better rethink things. Commodore Geary thinks the enemy warships will bolt in about a day, leaving the freighter and all the enemy ground apes behind.”
“Maybe they’d just surrender then,” Lamar said.
“Maybe,” Mele agreed. “Or maybe they’d load up in the freighter and force it to leave, knowing our squids can’t shoot them up while they have some of our people aboard as hostages. We need to make sure that option is closed off before the enemy realizes they need it.”
“Okay,” Lamar said. “Yeah. Yes, ma’am. It’ll be risky. But better than sitting back and watching our friends die. How do we get on the freighter? There’re bound to be sentries and sensors watching for any threat to it.”
“Ninja told me she thinks she can make a worm that’ll fool the enemy sensors into seeing us as friendlies.”
“Deception,” Giddings said. “Yes. That’s good. We’d just have to get the worm into their network.”
“Can you do that?” Mele asked.
“I’ve pulled some net gear off enemy armor, so, maybe, Major, we can do that if Ninja gets us that worm.”
“She’s good, right?” Lamar said.
“I wouldn’t want her going after my systems,” Giddings said.
“But you said she thinks she can do it, ma’am? What if she can’t?”
Mele tried to rub her forehead, her palm instead hitting the front of her helmet. “I’m open to ideas.”
“How about if we Marines pretend to be guards and the four friendly ground apes we’ve got are our prisoners and we’re taking them to the freighter—”
“We’d need five functional sets of enemy battle armor,” Giddings said.
“Okay, so if the friendly ground apes pretend to be guards and we Marines pretend to be prisoners, we’d only need four functional sets of enemy armor,” Lamar said.
“We haven’t even got one,” Giddings said.
“Can we capture any armor?” Mele asked. “Stage an ambush and strip the bodies?”
Giddings shook his head. “We could kill four or five of them, but getting functional armor off them that we could wear without looking like the walking dead? And without the enemy armor systems wiping themselves to prevent us using them? Major, what do you think the odds of that are? And we’d have to strip off the armor before an enemy reaction force got to the ambush site, and the enemy would see that we’d stolen four or five sets of armor and they’d probably figure we’d done that for a reason and—”
“Yeah,” Mele said. “That won’t fly. How about a diversion? Something to grab their attention so that even if the worm doesn’t work one hundred percent we can still get to the freighter before they notice?”
“We’d need another element to handle the diversion,” Lamar said. “Even with the friendly ground apes this group is pretty low on numbers. But if it gets confusing enough, and we can position ourselves to jump across to the freighter when the right moment comes, we might be able to get through before anyone realizes what we’re doing. I mean, they won’t expect it, will they? It’s a little crazy.”
“I’m going to be honest with you,” Mele said. “It’s a lot crazy. Until those new warships showed up to help us it would’ve been totally crazy. I need to get in contact with Gunny. Hopefully he’s got enough left with him to manage a diversion. Hey, suppose about the time the diversion starts, we also make sure all of the enemy ground apes learn that they’re facing five destroyers now, and their chances of winning and escaping have just entered a decaying orbit and will end in a big, ugly crater? Their own officers might not have been told, even if their senior commander got the word, and I bet he or she hasn’t. Their squids might be staying quiet on that to avoid, you know, worrying the ground apes.”
“Space squids and senior officers can be really considerate that way,” Corporal Lamar said. “Present company excepted, of course.”
“I doubt I’ll ever be a senior officer,” Mele said. “I’ve only gotten this far by sacrificing corporals whenever I needed to stage a diversion. Get me Gunny, Glitch.”
“Yes, ma’am. But first we need to move.”
“Okay. Let’s try not to get caught and killed on the way to the next hiding spot. Lamar—”
“Got it, Major. We’re moving again, boys and girls! Ford! Take point!”
They moved out behind a gloomy and grumbling Private Ford.