I scrabbled my way forward to join someone sheltering behind a dip in the hull. It was Chandra Khan.
“You okay, Chaka?” I asked.
“It’s going to be hard to get into that airlock without hurting someone,” Khan said.
Amira popped onto the command channel again. “I have another interesting question I think we need to mull.”
“Right now?” A piece of metal slammed into the rock hull, sending shards flying everywhere. I winced as the debris rattled against my armor.
“Now’s as good a time as any to get our heads straight,” Amira said. “We need to know what’s happening. What we’re doing. And you need to make some calls. Because you’re the leader here.”
“Okay, what’s wrong?” I wanted to rub my forehead.
“Ghost sign,” Amira said. “I have to keep my head down; I can’t help in the usual ways or it’ll spot me. It’s strong.”
“So the Conglomeration is here,” Ken said.
“How is that even possible?” Min Zhao demanded. “They were buried under the ground on Titan. But how are they on a carrier ship, here in the Trojans? How are they fucking popping up everywhere?”
“Don’t worry about how,” Ken said, his voice reassuring and calm. “Just worry about the fact that this mutiny is not what it seems.”
Things were shifting around again. Our plan to maybe sneak off somehow was fading. If there were Conglomeration here, ghosts here, something else was going on.
“This answers a question I have,” Ken said.
“Which is?” I asked.
“Where are the other platoons on this attack?”
I glanced up in the sparkling debris between us and the Trojan docks. No more shooting. No more drama.
“We’re it. There were other CPF around that might even have been closer,” Amira agreed. “Why us?”
“You think they’re suiciding us?” Lana Smalley asked. “Or using us as a diversion? Maybe they already know about Sthenos.”
I was lying with my back against the rock hull, still staring out into space. I could hear the tension in my sergeants’ voices. Smalley, Chin, and Zhao hadn’t attacked their Arvani commander. They’d been taking my orders calmly for long enough. They’d put themselves at risk for so long.
“They sent just us because of the ghost sign,” I said on the platoon’s common channel, taking the debate out of command loops. “Anais, his techs, they must have spotted it. So they sent us.”
“I don’t understand,” Smalley said.
“When Amira sniffed out the ghost sign back on Titan, it was because she was familiar with the patterns and code,” I said.
“Devlin. What are you doing?” Ken sounded nervous. That was a first.
“Time to let the Rockhoppers in on the great big fucking secret,” I said. “We captured a ghost. Back at Icarus Crater.”
“What?” I wasn’t even sure who shouted that in shock. “We’re supposed to get clear of them. How?”
“Luck,” I said. “But we know what we’re fighting. Accordance claims we need to pull back and let heavy forces in. But what they want is to not let humans find out what the ghosts are.”
“They’re human,” Amira said.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Smalley asked. “What do you mean, human?”
“They look like us. Inside this carrier, it could be anyone. They look like us. Ghosts look like us,” Ken said.
“Why haven’t you told us these things before?” Smalley continued.
“We were under very strict orders,” I said.
“Bullshit! Either we’re all in this together, or the three of you are just as useless as the squiddies,” Smalley snapped.
“Could they be sending us out here to die with that information?” someone asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But you all need to know what we’re facing in there.”
There was cursing in four different languages on the common.
“But what does it mean?” Ilyushin asked, frustrated.
“It means they need us,” Ken said.
Everyone quieted. “Go on,” I said.
“I’ve been thinking about this since Titan,” Ken explained. “The Conglomeration are using humans. Or something that looks human. The Accordance, they’re putting us into carrier ships like this one. They’re using us to build more ships. They wouldn’t be doing all of this, either of them, if they didn’t need us. The only reason humans took these ships over is because they were building them. The Arvani, they just don’t have the numbers. There are only a handful of Pcholem in the system. Even the struthiforms are dying off because they lost their homeworld, their nesting grounds.”
“How the fuck does that help us right here, right now?” Vorhis asked.
“Because we’ve assumed, since the day the Accordance came to orbit and pacified Earth, that it was about them. Their tools. Their abilities. Their technology. But the truth is, they’re fighting over us right now. That’s their weakness.”
“How the hell is them ripping us apart to fight over us a weakness?” The common channel devolved into angry voices.
“No,” I shouted. “Ken’s right.”
The common channel settled down.
“Anais sent us in because we know what ghosts are,” I said. “We’re not joining the Conglomeration. We’re not going to slaughter these people either, which is what the Arvani would want. They have skills we’re going to need soon.”
“When?” Ilyushin asked.
“When humanity gets out from under them all,” I said.
“That sounds like Earth First talk,” Ilyushin noted.
“Well, I am the son of famous Earth First terrorists,” I said. “What the hell were they expecting?”
I used my fingertips to skim along the hull.
“Where are you going?” Amira asked.
“To disable anyone firing at us with a homemade rail gun. Then we’re going to break in and, bulkhead by bulkhead, carefully retake this place without killing them. We’re wearing alien-designed power armor, built to take full combat hits. This is a one-sided battle.”
I flung myself over the rocky lip and toward the two spacesuits by the airlock.
“They might get lucky,” Amira shouted as slugs slammed into my helmet. For brief seconds, liquid metal streamed down the side of my vision as they obliterated themselves against the shielding.
“True,” I said. “So I’ll have to move quickly.”
And before I’d even finished muttering that, I was between the mutineers. They struggled to draw on me, but I snatched the weapons away, crushed them between my armored fingers, and shook my head.