Bravo squad had shucked down and were taking turns behind a cheap plastic booth to scrub down with wet wipes. The corridors had gotten thick with people being shifted around, temporarily sleeping in rows near the food halls while they waited for their next orders. The air had gone from smelling like saltpeter and rock to human sweat as unwashed bodies crammed up against each other in the asteroid.
Every level was packed. And when the platoon dallied, they swapped rumors. There was going to be a push to take Titan back. They were being gathered for a retreat back to Earth, skipping right past Jupiter, the belt, and Mars.
Whatever the plans were, they were keeping us in the dark, keeping leaks down.
Ken wanted to go back, I could tell. Wanted another chance at Titan.
But maybe, I thought, beefing up Earth to protect what was most important made sense. Maybe we’d be back within a glance of the blue marble again.
I missed it.
“Hey, Lieutenant.” Min Zhao had been up near the rock tunnel for a few seconds.
“What’s up, Max?”
She threw something in an easy curve through the air at me. I caught it and looked down. A small drive. “What is this?”
Zhao shrugged. “Smuggle mail. Been handed person to person all the way here. Came in with the new batch shipped up from home.”
“Anyone have a screen?”
Vorhis lifted his mattress up. “I’m not supposed to have this,” he muttered.
“I know,” I said, and plugged the drive in.
I’d asked what this was. But I already had a good idea. My mother’s face appeared on the screen. “Hey, son,” she said. “Hopefully, this gets to you safely.”
I sat down on the ground and put a finger up to the screen.
“By now, you might know we took a chance during the Rochester camp riots to get away from our minders. We don’t blame you for what you did. What any son would have done.”
But my father was not in the video.
“The Accordance is saying they need fighters. They need our help. So, we’re demanding independence. Earth for humans. If they really need our help, now is the time for them to give us our freedom back. I know some might disagree, they might say they’re the lesser evil. But can we really lay down our lives just to end up back under the Accordance if we help them win their war?”
Even though it had just been months since we’d been split apart, she looked older. There was a scar on her chin, and she’d cut her hair short. Almost military short. She wore a simple vest with extra pockets.
Were they still protesting? Or had they gone deeper underground? She was filming her message in a tent, I could see.
She looked thinner.
“Just remember this, Devlin. You’ve made a name for yourself. You did something amazing out there, on the other side of the moon. People listen to your words. They look up to you. Keep that in mind as you make your decisions. Because we’re all going to be making some tough choices soon. For Earth. For everyone. Be safe, son.”
I looked up from the blank screen and saw Ken regarding me. Alpha squad was back and shucking. Delta getting ready to walk on out to guard duty.
“They don’t know,” Ken said. “Yours or mine. They don’t know.”
“Yours love you and admire you being here,” I said. “Not the same.”
Ken walked over, still in full armor, as everyone pretended not to listen. “Yeah, they’re all in now,” he said with a bitter twist of his lip. “My sister died when an Earth First protestor set off a bomb in front of the Cairo Arvani embassy; my father still has a limp. Back then, he was a delegate, trying to broker calm, get what he could for many. After that, it was different. Anyway, they’re not that thrilled I’m under the command of the son of known anti-Accordance terrorists.”
“You still hold anger about it? Me?”
Ken grimaced. “I buried it for a while. Still hung on to it, maybe even as late as Titan. Now?”
“Now?”
“Don’t have any anger to waste,” Ken said. “I spent it all on other things. Anything I have left, I’m saving up for Zeus.”
“Captain Calamari,” I said. Our nickname for the Arvani commander when he’d been in charge of us back on Icarus Base.
“I doubt we’ll ever see sucker-face again,” I said.
“Everyone should have something they hope for,” Ken said. “Little things that give us a reason to wake up.”
+ + + +
Another shift. Another change. Another day guarding doors. This time not Pcholem but munitions stores. And the corridors were empty. People being moved to carriers.
But not us.
Whatever was going to happen, forward or retreat, was going to happen without the Rockhoppers.
Amira pulled me aside, her eyes flashing slightly from the nano-ink buried deep inside her irises. “Bad news,” she said quietly.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I told her. “Let’s just stand here and wait for whatever’s coming.”
“There’s ghost sign in the network,” she whispered. “Just like back on Titan. I can sense little things. We’re compromised. Hacked. Something. It came aboard with all the new arrivals.”
“What the fuck do you want to do about it?” I asked her, tired. “We’re not on patrol. We’re just supposed to stand here. Report what you’ve found and let it go up channel.”
“They’re here,” Amira hissed. “They’re here and that’s what matters. Not how the Accordance deals with it. But how we survive it. You and I both know how the ghosts can get inside a place like this.”
Because they looked just like us, I thought.
Or maybe the ghosts were us. The one we’d captured looked like a human. Moved like a human. I’d risked my life to bring the body back, and the Accordance told us we’d be killed if we spilled the secret.
Or maybe the Conglomeration was already changing humans and using them against us.
The dead ghost on the moon hadn’t told us anything. The Accordance hadn’t told us anything.
We were fighting blind in the middle of a war between two giant civilizations.
“Nobody stays more than a few steps away from armor,” I said. “You keep sniffing around. That’s all we can do.”
“We should be ripping this place apart.” Amira folded her arms. “Why do you think we’re standing around guarding munitions here?”
“Because even here, Arvani are outnumbered by humans. And the thousands of miners who have Earth First leanings are watching, waiting, and angry,” I said. “But we stumble, and Zeus’s family rips us apart. The Accordance does execute traitors. If our usefulness ends . . .”
“Finding ghosts is useful,” Amira said.
“We sleep near our armor and I make sure we all look the other way when you slip out to go sniffing around,” I told her.
Old habits. Old roles. She should be used to them by now.
“Listen, more and more people are being pulled into the asteroids. It’s getting crowded. General infantry without armor. Engineers. Technicians. Miners.”
“So we stay near armor, we stay near the weapons.”
“We need more, Devlin. More information. More Accordance technology. More. Because when they eventually fall all the way back to Earth and then abandon it, we can’t roll over.”
“Do you think Shriek’s people are still fighting back on his homeworld?” I asked. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”
“We can’t just roll over,” Amira repeated, and then shut up as Zizi Dimka came around the edge in armor.
“Something you should know,” she said to me.
“We’re to all report back to the cave to the new platoon commander,” she said.
“New?”
“Squiddie,” Zizi said. “Just showed up. I walked over because it’s on the command channel and I can listen in on public. Figured you’d want a heads-up on this.”
“CPF is human,” I said.
“It said something about a riot and emergency powers,” Zizi said. “It’s agitated. All of us are to get down to the cave.”
“Fucking Arvani.” I looked around. “Okay, I guess we’re leaving the munitions doors unguarded, then.” The several feet of thick metal would have to hold shut without us.