Angles of Attack (11 page)

“We’ll need to quarter our new friend, too,” I say, and point over my shoulder.

“Ah, yes,” Colonel Campbell says. “I want you very close to him for as long as he’s on this ship. I’m not asking you to hot-bunk with him, but see if the master sergeant can find you adjoining quarters. If he’s out of his berth, I want you to be with him. Last thing I need is that enemy combat controller finding a quiet corner and a data jack somewhere.”

“Understood, sir,” I say.

“Take heart, Mr. Grayson,” the colonel says. He turns back to his holotable and examines the plot again. “You’ll be on the bleeding edge of the shitstorm once again, but at least we’ll be doing exactly what this ship was designed to do. Unless they parked a seed ship right across the Alcubierre node on the solar system side, we’ll make it through to Earth.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. I’m not quite as convinced as he is, to put it mildly, but his confident attitude helps to take the edge off my own anxiety a little. Every time I’ve worked with Colonel Campbell, I’ve bucked dreadful odds. Either I’ll get lucky again, or I’ll die a quick death in good company.

Master Sergeant Bogdan finds us two adjoining berths in the mission-personnel module of the ship, which is occupied by the
Indy
’s embarked Spaceborne Infantry squad. All the grunts on this ship have been assigned to the
Indy
since before she last left the solar system, so they were all on the New Svalbard side of the mutiny a few weeks ago. That means I won’t have to constantly watch my back when I go to the mess hall or the head, which is a relief. There are ten berthing slots in the personnel module. All the junior enlisted SI grunts are sharing three multibunk berths, one for each of the three fire teams, and the three sergeants and the squad’s lieutenant each get their own private berths. Two of the berths are still empty, so Dmitry gets one berth and I get to claim another, continuing the record streak of private berthing spaces I’ve been able to keep going for at least a year now.

I stash my kit in the locker and the storage drawer under the bunk. I don’t have much to tuck away other than the brand-new battle armor and HEBA kit they issued me on
Regulus
two weeks ago. My personal gear is still at Camp Frostbite—maybe in the locker where I placed it, possibly in the trash incinerator—and I’ve not had the desire to claim it in person. Camp Frostbite is controlled by the Spaceborne Infantry troops that obeyed the
Midway
commander’s order to seize the civilian assets on New Svalbard, and we killed about thirty of their number when we fought back. If I show up at Frostbite to pick up my stuff, I am likely to end up in the brig.

When all my kit is secured, I stretch out on the bunk for a bit and watch the viewport on the door, which I have turned on to monitor the corridor outside for my new SRA pal.

Dmitry knocks on the hatch a few minutes later. I get up to answer the knock.

“Does advanced imperialist warship of yours have place to eat of some sort?” he asks when I open the hatch.

“Yes, it does. You may have to make do with a sandwich and some coffee if it’s not mealtime right now, though.”

“Coffee is
kharasho
,” Dmitry says. “Maybe sandwiches will be not shit.”

“Well, let’s go,” I say. “The mess is one deck up.”

The NCO mess is mostly empty. One of the tables is occupied by two senior sergeants with a data pad and a pile of paperwork between them. They look up when we walk in, and neither makes an effort to conceal a bit of surprise at the sight of a fleet NCO walking in with an SRA trooper. The camouflage pattern of the SRA battle dress is an irregular collection of brown, green, and black blotches that looks almost reptilian. It’s nothing like the regular digital pattern of the NAC battle dress, and the Alliance grunt sticks out on this ship like a peppercorn in a saltshaker.

We get coffees and sandwiches and claim a table in the corner of the mess. The two fleet sergeants return to their paperwork but shoot us curious glances every once in a while.

“Sandwiches are not shit,” Dmitry proclaims after his second one. They are standard between-meals fleet chow, bologna and soy cheese with a smidgen of mustard. They’re not entirely awful, but they’re far from not shit. I’ve had so many of them over the years that I only eat them when I have no other choice and my stomach is very empty. If Dmitry likes them, they must feed those SRA troopers some pretty awful garbage over in the
Minsk’s
NCO mess.

Overhead, the 1MC announcing system comes to life, and Colonel Campbell’s voice interrupts my contemplation of relative cross-bloc culinary standards.

“Attention all hands, this is the CO.”

Even though the 1MC speaker strands are built into the filament of the ceiling liner and invisible, I still turn my head up out of habit. Dmitry follows suit.

“We have completed replenishment and secured all stores. As soon as we have finished our final neural-net synchronization with the rest of the task force, we will get under way and leave New Svalbard for the coordinates the Alliance has transmitted to us. We are setting out for the SRA Alcubierre node in this system. From there we will transition back into our solar system and begin our scouting run. There is no doubt in my mind that this ship will fulfill her mission and return to New Svalbard with the intelligence needed by the rest of the task force. This is what this ship was built to do. This is what this crew was trained to do. I will not wish us luck. We won’t need luck, because we have skill. Those skinny planet-stealing sons of bitches are the ones who are going to need luck, and lots of it. We’re going home. All hands, prepare for departure.”

Dmitry nods and turns his attention back to his half-eaten sandwich. “Good speech,” he says around a mouthful of food. “
Ochyen kharasho
.”

I take my PDP out of the leg pocket of my battle dress and bring up a picture of Halley. It’s the one she sent me after she graduated Combat Flight School, when the world was still in balance and we were still slugging it out with the Chinese and Russians, unaware of the Lankies’ existence or the coming two-front war we’d be fighting for the next half decade. I zoom in on her face, that barely contained proud smile that’s teasing, gloating, and loving all at the same time. Then I freeze the screen and run the tip of my index finger along her jawline.

We’re going home
. I repeat the colonel’s words in my head.
I’ll see you after we run the blockade
. Piece of cake.

CHAPTER 5

Front sight, press
, I remind myself.
Ride the reset. Two shots, change target, two shots.

The M109 automatic pistol in my hands bucks very slightly with every shot I fire at the troops in the hallway before me. Some are hidden behind makeshift cover, only popping out to return fire sporadically. Every time I am forced to fight with the pistol, it reaffirms my belief that the stupid thing is the most useless weapon in our arsenal, good for nothing but a display of rank.

One of my opponents pops his head up over the storage crate he’s using as cover and aims his PDW at me. I put the front sight on his helmet and fire a quick double tap. One round glances off my enemy’s helmet, but the other drills right through his lowered face shield. He drops instantly, and his PDW clatters to the deck. I don’t have time to celebrate my brief victory—two more enemy troops come around the corridor bend twenty-five meters ahead, and the slide of my weapon is locked back on an empty magazine. I eject the disposable cartridge pack, fish a new one out of a pouch on my harness, and reload with fingers that seem too clumsy and imprecise for the task. I release the pistol’s slide and switch the fire selector to salvo fire. Then I hose down the hallway with most of the thirty-round magazine. One of the new soldiers catches a burst to his armor, but the rounds fragment against the hard laminate of his breastplate. Then they return fire together, automatic bursts from two PDWs converging on my hiding spot. The hallway in front of me goes dark.

“Piece of shit,” I swear when the lights in the firing range come back on and the simulation resets itself. I unload the training magazine from the pistol and clear the action. “Who programmed these scenarios? Seven against one, and all of them armored and with buzzguns?”

“The lieutenant did,” Staff Sergeant Philbrick says. “We’re just a squad on this boat. We get boarded, we may have to hold down a corridor with what we have, by ourselves.”

“Remind me of that if I ever get the itch to put in for transfer to the SI,” I say.

“You did all right for a fleet puke.” Staff Sergeant Philbrick pokes at the display of the range computer on the bulkhead behind us. “Three kills. Seven more nonpenetrating hits.”

“Those don’t count for shit outside the sim.”

Staff Sergeant Philbrick is the leader of the embarked Spaceborne Infantry squad’s first fire team. The squad is split into three fire teams of four troopers each, twelve combat grunts, with a second lieutenant in command and a sergeant first class as his right hand. Fourteen battle-hardened SI troopers make up the sole ground combat component of the
Indianapolis
. A frigate usually has two squads, sometimes a whole platoon, depending on the mission. A carrier, designed as the centerpiece of a planetary assault force, never has less than a reinforced company on board, and often a regiment. If
Indy
bumps into problems that require infantry surface action or shipboard firefights, fourteen SI troopers won’t be able to plug too many corridors, not even on a small ship like this one.

The
Indianapolis
is hauling ass to the coordinates for the SRA’s Alcubierre node. We’re half a day away, and we went for turnaround and reverse burn almost two days ago after a fun little four-g sprint. Every day we spend in transit means fewer supplies and less food in New Svalbard and on this ship, and Colonel Campbell does not want to waste any time. I’ve been spending my shipboard time chaperoning Dmitry, and spending most of my downtime with the grunts of the embarked SI squad. Shooting up imaginary enemies is more fun than staring at a bulkhead, and it keeps my mind occupied and off the fact that in less than twelve hours
Indy
will transition into Lanky-occupied space.

“How is the Russkie behaving?” Staff Sergeant Philbrick asks.

“Fine,” I say. “He seems all right.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to sleep in a berth right next to his.”

“What, you think he’s going to go commando one night and start slitting throats?” I put the training pistol back into the holding bracket on the rear bulkhead for the next trooper to use. Access to live weapons is limited—you only get to sign them out of the arms locker if you have a pressing reason to go armed on the ship—but the training pistols can’t be loaded with live rounds, and they are molded in bright blue polymer for visual clarification.

“Something like that. We’re still at war with them out here, after all.”

“I’m not sure that’s true anymore,” I say.

“What do you mean, Grayson?”

“I mean that things have changed. A lot. We know the location of their inbound node for the solar system now, and they know ours. You think we’re going to go back to shooting each other any time soon? After trading top-level military secrets and running combat drops together against the Lankies?”