Several squads had been tasked with clearing out the burned-out command center. The debris had been dragged out. Teams had scrubbed everything down. Techs were underneath stations hanging cables; someone with an arc welder occasionally lit the room up with sharp searing white light, their exaggerated shadows dancing along the walls. There were bustle and determined hurry everywhere I looked.
“Good to see us back up,” Jun Chen muttered, looking around. We’d been called up to command. I’d picked Chen and Vorhis from Bravo squad to run with me.
Anais dwelled at the center of it all, the eye of the CPF hurricane.
But he didn’t look all that calm.
In fact, for the first time since I’d ever met him, Anais looked flustered, exhausted, and worried.
“I didn’t know you were in command of the operation,” I said, joining him at the center of the calm. “I thought General Song would be here.”
“The general didn’t make it to ground,” Anais said. “I ended up being the highest-ranked to land.”
I searched my mind for something appropriate to say and came up blank. Instead, I half shrugged in my armor and grunted something vague.
Anais looked at me in the full armor. “Rockhoppers never shuck, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m thinking that should go company-wide. Everyone in Shangri-La.”
“Bombs got under your skin?” I asked. “Not enough people turn out waving flags to welcome the CPF back?”
Anais brushed that aside. “It’s not people I’m worried about.” He took a deep breath and then rubbed his forehead. Then he looked around as if worrying about anyone hearing him. Decided not to say anything. Then changed his mind again.
I’d never seen such an uncertain Anais before.
“Alien problem?” I prompted.
“The engineers and Zeus set charges in the heavy weaponry. We’re vulnerable from above,” Anais finally told me.
“We have orbit. Four carriers and their anti-ship weapons.”
“What if we lose them?” Anais responded quickly. “I’m asking for replacements, my superiors are saying they won’t be able to bring anything in.”
Trouble in paradise. I suddenly realized that Anais was in the dark with the rest of us. “You don’t know why the Accordance all left us in orbit, do you? They’re shrooming you like the rest of us?”
“Shrooming?”
Too long spent with his tongue up Arvani assholes. I shook my head. “Putting you in the dark, feeding you shit? Like a mushroom.”
“Oh.” Anais nodded. “I wouldn’t say I don’t know what’s happening. Come.”
We walked across the control center to one of the old officers’ cubicles. It had been quickly reinforced with heavy rebar welded into place to create a makeshift jail cell. Zeus sat inside, still in full armor. But his armored tentacles were all manacled to the walls.
“He has enough working environmental equipment to last a week or so if we give him some food here and there,” Anais said. “He’s talking to us.”
“Talking?” I had to bite my lip. I wanted to shoot the Arvani in the faceplate, over and over again until it cracked and his water ran out and he choked in the air.
“They’re not going to drop in any equipment to Titan,” Zeus said, stirring to stand awkwardly despite the chains holding him in place. “Because they’ve already written off everything down here. No sense in throwing good after bad.”
I whirled on Anais. “By putting this traitor piece of shit here in your command center, you’re letting the enemy sit and whisper in your ear.”
“You accused me of not knowing where the rest of the fleet went,” Anais said. “Here’s what I do know. Everything is on a fast burn for Saturn.”
“Saturn?”
“But that’s not the target. It’s a fast burn and then a skip. They’re going to whip around and keep going. Not coming back,” Anais said.
“They’re just going to leave us here?” I asked. “You truly believe that?”
That weight he’d been carrying. I could see what it was. “I think we were a diversion,” Anais said wearily.
“You were,” Zeus boomed. “There are too many Conglomeration even on Titan for you to do more than hold Shangri-La for a while before being overrun. They are underground, in other Conglomerate bases. Once the humans here agreed to terms, most of the invasion forces left. I was enough, with my bodyguards.”
I glanced over scornfully. “What, you’re telling us this out of a desire to help?”
“To assist myself, yes,” Zeus said, large octopus-like eyes wide behind the watery glass. “If what Anais says is true, nothing else matters other than my need to get off Titan.”
“So, it is self-preservation?” I raised an eyebrow, dubious.
Zeus shook his shackles. “Titan is lost. Saturn is lost. It is now time to poison the reef to keep it from your enemies. To leave the stain of death upon it forever so that it will be tasted in all the currents nearby, so that all understand what happens when your territory is taken from you.”
Anais and I both moved closer to the welded rebar as one. “What do you mean?” I asked. “What happens next?”
“You’ve already seen it, humans. You’ve seen what happens to the worlds that are taken from the Accordance. It is broadcasted to you all. The Conglomeration do what they can, but they die in the plagues and horror the Accordance unleash so that the Conglomeration cannot use those worlds against the Accordance.”
If I wasn’t locked into full armor, I would have wanted to sit down. “The Accordance?”
“If we lose a world,” Zeus explained, “we unleash biological bombs. Weapons that won’t pop and fizzle in a small little area. We unleash something that will destroy everything. If the Accordance fleet has left you, if it is burning for Saturn, then everything in the Saturn system dies. Taking Titan, that was to get the Conglomeration to pay attention here.”
“We drop down. We kick things up, and then we go back up to the carriers and run away,” I said. “That’s how you’ll know if the squid’s right. If we get ordered back upstairs.”
Anais was leaning against the bars, holding himself up on them. “Would they bomb everyone down here? After we leave?”
“The Conglomeration is here,” Zeus said simply.
I turned to Anais. “How do you like your masters now?”
“Now is not the time for treasonous talk,” he said wearily.
“When is it the time?” I asked.
“The traitor is messing with our heads. You were right at the start,” Anais said, straightening up. “I shouldn’t have chained him up here. Or even talked to him. There are Conglomeration that will be counterattacking. We need to prepare for that.”
“You have just hours before the call. You know the fleet is swinging close to Saturn,” Zeus said on the common channel. “You need to start evacuating now. Get yourselves, and me, well clear of here.”
“Get back to your platoon, Lieutenant,” Anais ordered, face hardening as he ignored the Arvani. “And stay armored up.”
“Rockhoppers don’t shuck,” I said.
Anais looked at Vorhis and Chen. “They good?”
“Rockhopper solid,” I said.
“Leave them guarding Zeus. They don’t listen to anything he says. They don’t let anyone talk to Zeus.”
“You’re splitting up my platoon?” I wasn’t happy with that.
“I need everyone else putting things back together or sweeping tunnels. I need two on Zeus that have seen the fight.”
“I’ll do it. But you called me here because I know Zeus,” I said. “You wanted that expertise. We trained with Zeus. We fought Zeus. You wanted my opinion. Here it is: The squid is right. You want advice from your heroes of the Darkside War? Get prepared for the worst, not just dug in.”