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Grenville strolled down the hall toward the Hunting Cry’s forward briefing room. Djehuti alternated between walking at his side and skipping up the hall and checking to see who else was around. Other than staff and officers, there were no other Rangers for him to find. No other wolves.
More than a week had passed since the Charlie Foxtrot on Burbidge, which left him wondering why he was the one getting called to the commander’s briefing room. The summons was a bad sign. He tried to think of anything that might have triggered a warning in his after-action report, but he'd gone through their ambush and escape in excruciating detail. He’d even included his destruction of the rangefinder to create a makeshift communications laser.
He was about to knock when the door slid open. Lt. Commander Livv, the ship’s XO, stood just inside the doorway, and Grenville snapped to an immediate salute. Behind her, he could see the Ghost—Commander Penzak—hunched over the table with his fingers splayed wide. Reflexively, Grenville reached down and sank his hand into the warmth of Djehuti’s coat.
Livv returned his quick salute before she and her wolf backed out of the doorway. "Good, you’re here."
Grenville stepped into the room. "Not like I have anywhere else to go. Unless we pulled out to orbit Kanaloa when I wasn't looking." He watched the commander’s stern face for hope of a smile, but none came.
"Have a seat, Ranger." Commander Penzak’s voice was oddly distant, flat. Without emotion. Grenville knew the commander had lost his wolf in combat, every rookie knew the stories, but every time he met the man hammered home how fragile the wolfbond could be. The permanence of the connection terrified him. Neither ranger nor wolf survived when it broke.
Grenville pulled out a chair and sat down at the rectangular table, his pulse irregular. The forward briefing room was for reprimands, personnel discussions, and disciplinary hearings. Operations didn’t get planned in the forward room. Djehuti felt his distress and laid his head in Grenville's lap. The wash of faith, the warm calm that flooded through Grenville, reminded him of the wolfbond’s upside. There was always someone who believed in you, who had your back even in the worst situations.
After the uncomfortable silence stretched out, Grenville tried on a smile. “So, this wolf goes into a bar...”
The door slid shut with a hiss. Grenville didn’t have to turn to visualize the XO’s thin frown. “Not the time, Ranger.”
He nodded. “Can’t blame me for trying. If this is about the rangefinder, I understand if the TJF needs to bill me for destroying property."
Behind him, Livv scoffed.
The commander shot her a narrow-eyed gaze. "The Forces have recommended a thorough check of all our range-finding lasers. A malfunction of that sort could be dangerous to a team in the field. On the record, of course." Penzak raked fingers through his short salt-and-pepper hair. "Off the record, that was brilliant, and you saved the lives of your fireteam."
"Just doing my job." The phrase reminded him of Lewis's casual dismissal of his appreciation for her flying skills. That brought up a whole different kind of discomfort. He literally owed her his life, which made any space between them uncomfortable with weight. In his quieter moments, he wondered how things might be if they could reach past the strangeness. Even if it were possible, it didn’t look like he’d get the chance. Since the rescue on Burbidge, she’d been avoiding him again. It made him wonder what he’d done to spook her.
The commander shrugged slightly. "I don’t normally expect humility from you. You’re a quick thinker under pressure. And you visualize communications better than anyone else on the Cry. Conveniently, I have a use for that skill set." He pressed a button on the table, and the far door opened.
It took Grenville a moment to recognize the woman who walked into the room. Sheri Tyler was one of three operatives who worked alongside the Rangers, but he was used to seeing her in starched utility dress and with her hair pulled tight under a brimmed officer’s cover. She had the same hard eyes, but that was all that remained familiar about her. One side of her head had been shaved, the rest hanging straight, and she wore grease-stained coveralls like a common dock rat.
Grenville smirked. "Love the look. Does this mean we’re loosening the restrictions for the rangers?"
“Operative Tyler has been working undercover to get information about how Triptych is coordinating their attacks." The commander pushed back his chair. "Operative? The table is yours."
Tyler tapped on the interactive surface of the table and activated the holo-projector unit. The Kronus system with its six habitable moons suddenly floated over the middle of the table, and she cleared her throat. "As you know, Triptych is getting smarter, and they’re getting better equipped. A key to that appears to be an encrypted communication channel which they’ve been using in the Kronus system."
"Easy enough to fix," Grenville said. "Send Bravo in there. We can blow it up, and they’ll be back to the dumb, old Triptych we know and hate."
"Actually, that's the worst possible idea." Tyler rolled her eyes before looking at the commander. "I thought you said he was the smart one."
"I've been accused of many things. Smart isn't typically one of them."
"Obviously." The operative clucked her tongue before focusing the image in on the narrow set of rings surrounding Kronus. "Disrupting their communications would only make them find a new method. I’d rather have a better idea of what to expect. Knowing their communications path means we have an opportunity to intercept and decode their conversations for ourselves. Once we understand how Triptych's cells are communicating with each other, we learn what they're talking about, and where they plan to strike next..."
"So you’re looking for someone who can hack their systems." Grenville’s mind had already started churning. “They’re going to have keys on either end to help with decryption, but if they’re clever, they’ll be scrambling the actual transmission—wavelength shifting, stuff like that.”
Tyler nodded. “Okay, Commander, maybe he’s not as dumb as he looks. You hacked a lot of secure communications, Ranger?”
That was a loaded question. “I could count the number of opportunities I’ve had on one hand.” He held up his three-fingered hand, thankful that the operative wasn’t familiar enough to be prepared for his favorite joke. Her eyes immediately went to the stumps of his missing fingers then looked away.
“Sorry. Djehuti was hungry, and you know how the wolfbond gets.” He grinned.
“Enough, Ranger.” The commander’s voice held a light note, almost as though he was amused. Or as amused as he was capable of being. “Continue, Operative.”
Tyler pinched the bridge of her nose. “We have an encryption key. So that’s part of the equation.” She poked a finger into the hologram, and a point in the ring lit up. “We know they’re relaying through this point here—the shepherd moon, Castulus."
The holo zoomed in, showing an oblong speck of rock tumbling through the middle of Kronus’s furthest ring. She continued. “If we can get a monitoring device in place on or very near their relay station, we should be able to intercept their most secure communications."
Grenville leaned back in his chair, tipping the front legs off the floor. "They’re not going to leave something like that undefended.”
“We don’t think they have much choice. Castulus is too small to hold much, and because it’s inside Kronus’s Roche limit, it’s tearing itself apart a little at a time. Anything permanent has to be anchored deep so it doesn’t get ripped off by tidal forces. There may be a handful of soldiers there, but nothing the size of even a small garrison.”
“So you’re not sending a full fireteam. Me and Djehuti?” His battle-buddy was on leave, visiting his new girlfriend in some cabin on Tyson. The idea of going alone was almost as bad as the idea of being paired with someone new.
Tyler shook her head, straight hair swinging. “There won’t be room for more than you and the wolf. Because the mission requires a clandestine insertion, you’ll be on board a recommissioned belt miner. Covers have been generated to allow you to pass off as down-on-your-luck scrappers with big debts. It’s a good excuse to try ring harvesting.”
In Grenville’s opinion, there was never a good reason to try ring harvesting, but if you were willing to risk the radiation, tidal wells, and a hundred other potentials for random, messy death, a person could make money collecting radiated organics and rare minerals out of the dust. “That's great and all, but you're talking about flying into a planetary ring. It's not an asteroid belt, sure, but the tidal forces are vicious. Any pilot willing to do that better be nuts or incredibly skilled. Or ideally, both." As soon as he said the words, discomfort prickled across the back of his neck. He tried to rub the sensation away with one hand.
Commander Penzak nodded. "You’re right. That's why we're sending the best pilot I've got."
#
IMEE DID A DOUBLE TAKE out the small viewport next to the airlock. The shit-hauler—there was no other word that fit—floating at the other end of the short, flexible airlock corridor looked like it could fall apart at any moment. She fixed her anger on the operative who’d been waiting at the ‘lock. "What the hell is this? A joke?"
"Obviously there's no room in the Hunting Cry’s hangar with all six dropships onboard. A retractable airlock is the best way to get you aboard the ship." Tyler folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes. Imee was reasonably certain it was supposed to be a menacing stare. She was unimpressed.
"Operative, I was top of my class in the pilot’s academy. My teacher ate smug grins for breakfast and could outstare a hawk. So if you think that glare is going to intimidate me, you are misinformed.” She pursed her lips. Command had told her she’d been selected for a vital mission. This felt more like humiliation. “You know full well I'm not asking about the airlock. What the hell is that ship?"
The corner of Tyler's mouth curled up slightly. “That’s an Ursus-class ore hauler, obviously. They have a long range, are popular with belt miners, and in this case, was reclaimed during an operation with a Triptych-aligned smuggling network. All of which make it perfectly suited to an undercover mission like this."
Unbelievable. And yet how typical of military intelligence. They just made the assumption that a ship was a ship, and a pilot was a pilot. Two parts of a machine they could swap out as they saw fit. No one appreciated how the connection could be so much more organic.
Sure, she’d be able to fly it. Simple missions, certainly. She’d probably even be able to make it perform better than other pilots in her unenviable position. But there was a damn vast gulf between being able to fly a ship and being comfortable enough to pilot her into a planetary ring. To take a vessel safely into an ever-shifting labyrinth of tidal eddies and gravitational currents, surrounded by random debris and with a planet-size blind spot on one side of the ship? The pilot needed to wear their vessel like a second skin. Needed to understand every inch of the ship, how it behaved, what its individual lags and idiosyncrasies were. She excelled as a dropship pilot because sliding into the pilot’s seat was coming home. If she was blinded, she could fly it by sound alone, and if her ears failed, she was reasonably confident she could pilot it by sense of smell.
But this thing? Imee felt like she needed to have her tetanus shots updated just from looking at it. "It'll never work."
"Lieutenant, you’re paid to make it to work. The Joint Forces are counting on you to make it work, for the safety of—"
"Save that rah-rah bullshit for the rangers,” Imee snapped. “They're all about that gung-ho thing." She took another look through the airlock window. Pockmarks from micrometeors and carbon scoring from stellar radiation covered the hauler’s mismatched surface. Some of the panels appeared to have come from an entirely different ship and had been cut to fit. "I’m saying I'd need weeks to have a good handle on how that ship flies before I could take it into a belt."
Tyler leaned against the far wall, fingers laced behind her head. Her civilian, undercover attire looked out of place onboard the otherwise pristine military vessel. "Then you're in luck. My math says it’ll take you eleven to twelve days to reach the shepherd moon. It’s not weeks, but it’s plenty of otherwise-empty time. Fortunately, your file says you're a quick study."
Imee didn’t let her annoyance show. If she was honest, two weeks at the helm would give her plenty of experience. Extra acceleration up front, maybe borrowing a slingshot around Tyler, and she could work in some maneuver tests and get an idea of the hauler’s blind spots and foibles. Not that she was about to give Tyler the satisfaction of being right. "Fine. Let me aboard, and I’ll stow my gear and start getting familiar.”
Tyler leaned across the hall and placed her hand against the airlock's access code. A moment later the light turned green and the door cycled open. “Help yourself. One warning—this is a clandestine mission. Civilian gear only. The TJF cannot afford for something to reveal that we’re snooping about in the area."
There was a commotion up the hall, and Imee turned just in time to see an umbra wolf barreling up the hall toward her. In the polarized light of the ship's hallways, the wolf’s fur was ebony instead of its typical blur. His lean, narrow face and long legs were a mismatch compared to the thick ruff and long ear tufts. She knelt and scrubbed her fingers into the coat. “Hey, Djehuti. What are you doing here?”
“Ah. Your mission partner has arrived." Tyler smiled. "Lieutenant Lewis, Ranger Grenv—"
"We've met." Her hand stopped petting the wolf, and she looked at Grenville standing just a few feet away. His normally casual features floated somewhere between amusement and horror. She understood how he felt. She’d been doing her best to avoid the temptation of him for the past week. Two to three weeks with no one else around felt suddenly terrifying.
She didn’t take her eyes off him as she talked to the operative. “Wait a minute. You don't want any evidence the TJF is involved, but he gets to bring his damn wolf?"
“There’s likely to be resistance on Castulus’s surface, which means you’ll need a skilled combatant as well as a communications expert. Ranger Grenville is both. Wolves and rangers are a package deal." Tyler checked something off on her omnidevice. "Besides, there's no polarized light on the ship, so the wolf will have no trouble hiding in case you’re boarded."
Which was no help at all if they clipped a rock or got shot down, and their corpses vented into space. But saying so out loud felt like asking for trouble. She looked at Grenville. “You and Hootie finally get a chance to prove how amazing you are, eh?”
“Don't call him that. You know he hates it.” Despite the proclamation, the wolf was in fine spirits, tail wagging and tongue lolling at her attention. His cocky grin lit up his face. “Besides, two weeks gives me plenty of time to buy you that drink.”
Her roommate would never let her hear the end of it if she found out she was locked on a cargo hauler with Grenville. "Not while I’m piloting. Or thinking about piloting. Which is always. Rack in. We’re leaving in ninety." She had to go back to her quarters first. No way she wasn't taking a full tool kit with her. The ship looked like it could come apart at any moment.
Plus, in the worst-case scenario, she could use the tools to build a wall and lock Grenville in his berth. She reached down to pet Djehuti one more time. She’d let the wolf stay out though. She’d always had a soft spot for dogs.