Angles of Attack (20 page)

“Have a seat and relax for a little while until the MPs come and pick you up.”

“Relax,” I say. The wad of bandage I’m pressing against my face is now tinted in various shades of red, and my head hurts enough to make my eyes water. “That’s just what I’ll do. Thanks.”

The cop leaves the room and closes the door behind him. I walk over to one of the benches lining the walls and lie down on it. I’ve not been in a detention cell in five years of service, but from the look of things, I’m going to have to get used to this sort of environment.

I close my eyes and try to ignore the pain enough to take a nap, without great success.

A little while later, the door of the detention berth opens again. I sit up, expecting the MP detail that will haul me off to the shuttle down to the fleet brig in Norfolk. But the newcomers aren’t military police. The civvie cop walks in, followed by Dmitry and Colonel Campbell.

“Have a seat, gentlemen,” the cop says.

Colonel Campbell nods at me and sits down on the bench nearby.

Dmitry rubs his wrists and looks around the room. Then he looks at me and shakes his head slightly. “Andrew, my friend,” he says. “You look like garbage. Have you had not-good ideas again?”

“
Iz ognya da v polymya
,” I agree.

CHAPTER 11

“Why did you have to go and pick a fight with those CSS goons?” Colonel Campbell asks.

I’m lying down on my bench again because it’s easier to keep the blood in my head that way. Dmitry is sitting leaned back against the stark white wall of the detention berth, arms folded, watching the muted Network screen with a slightly bored expression. Colonel Campbell is pacing around in what little space there is, hands in the pockets of his CDU fatigues.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “I guess since they were hauling me off to the brig anyway, I figured I ought to make it worth my while.”

“I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter much. You’re just lucky they didn’t stitch you with fléchettes.”

“That major was about five pounds of trigger pull away from it,” I say. “Couldn’t help myself. Told the CSS agent that we had to go back to Fomalhaut, or thirty thousand people are going to bite it. And he just shrugs and goes, ‘Too bad.’ ”

I sit up with a grunt and look at the bandage in my hand. At least my nose has stopped bleeding, but the headache is still there.

“They’re not going to let us leave,” I say.

“Oh, I know,” Colonel Campbell says. “I have been relieved of command. They’re going to replace the department heads and senior personnel, and then they’re going to attach
Indy
to what’s left of the fleet here around Earth.”

“That’s nuts.
Indy
’s damaged. She’s not going to make fuck-all of a difference when the Lankies come calling. No offense, Colonel.”

“None taken. And you’re right. She needs a month in the fleet yard and six weeks of shore leave for the crew to get back into fighting shape.”

He straightens out his uniform tunic and sits down across from me.

“None of this is right,” he says. “You don’t send civvie cops to arrest mutineers. You send military police. What business does a CSS agent have on a warship? And chucking Sergeant Chistyakov here into the brig with us? That’s a straight-up treaty violation. He should have been put on a shuttle and ferried over to Unity Station.”

“That major who was with the CSS agent wasn’t right, either,” I say. “No unit patches. No specialty badge. Just a name tag and a pair of rank sleeves.”

“I noticed that,” Colonel Campbell says. “Shit ain’t right. Hasn’t been since we made contact with that picket force. They’ve locked out all comms on
Indy
. Full EMCON. We can only talk with the station via hard line.”

“That explains why my PDP couldn’t connect to MilNet.” I want to throw away the blood-soaked bandage roll in my hand, but there’s no trash container here in the lockup, so I reluctantly hold on to it.

“They’re keeping a lid on us,” the colonel concludes. “Making sure we don’t talk to anyone.”

“About what? Fomalhaut? Or Mars? You think they’re trying to keep Mars a secret?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” he says. “Event of that magnitude, that close to Earth? There’s people calling their relatives on Mars every day. They probably knew about the invasion down on Earth about twelve and a half minutes after the first Lanky ship showed up in Mars orbit.”

“So why keep us isolated?”

“Beats me,” Colonel Campbell says. “But if
Indy
doesn’t get to leave in the next day or three and hightail it back to Fomalhaut . . .”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but I know what he means. Even without the Lankies, the colonists and soldiers crammed onto the little ice moon won’t live through the coming hard winter. I was hungry a lot when I grew up, and there’s very little you won’t do for some extra calories when the hunger is gnawing at the back of your rib cage. I know that I’d rather go out fighting the Lankies than by wasting away in an underground city while the temperature outside is low enough to shock-freeze exposed skin instantly.

“You want to make breakout, perhaps?” Dmitry says sleepily from his corner. “Might be next un-good idea you have. Maybe this time you can get bullet wound.”

“I’m not fighting a bunch of armed cops hand to hand,” I say. “But it’s not me we need to get back to
Indy
. It’s you.”

Dmitry raises an eyebrow and tears his attention away from the Network screen. “How is this?”

“Without the access code for the Alliance node,
Indy
can’t go back through to Fomalhaut. They sure as hell can’t use the Commonwealth node. We gotta go back the way we came.”

“Where is your armor, Sergeant Chistyakov?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“Is in berth, on spy ship of yours. They come take me off, do not ask about armor. I decide not to tell them.”

“If they remember to ask, tell them we gave you one of our vacsuits for the trip,” Colonel Campbell says. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?” I ask. “Major Renner stealing
Indy
out of the dock and making the run back to Fomalhaut by herself?”

Colonel Campbell leans back with a sigh and stretches his legs.

“They’re replacing the whole command crew,” he says. “Major Renner is just running the boat until they hand it over to a new skipper and XO.
Indy
isn’t going anywhere right now.”

He shrugs and flashes a brief smile, which makes the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes look a little craggy in the harsh LED light from overhead.

“But you never know what kind of weird shit can happen in a hurry, Mr. Grayson.”

We don’t have to wait long for our pickup. Not thirty minutes after Colonel Campbell and Dmitry join me in the detention berth, the door opens again, and one of the cops sticks his head into the room.

“Get up,” he says. “Military police is here to pick you up.”

We stand up as instructed. Dmitry yawns and stretches. He still looks like our predicament is boring him to tears, but I can tell that he is sizing up the cop in the door with a quick glance. Colonel Campbell just looks pissed off.

The cop in the door steps out of the way, and four MPs walk into the room. One stands by the door, hand on his holstered sidearm. The other three each step up to one of us.

“Let’s go, folks,” the MP by the door says. His rank sleeves identify him as a sergeant. The other MPs are a corporal and two privates first class.

“I’m not ‘folks,’ ” Colonel Campbell says. “I’m a colonel and the captain of a fleet ship. I don’t give a shit who sent you or where you are taking us, but you will address me as sir.” He gestures at Dmitry and me. “For that matter, every one of us outranks every one of you.”

“You know rank means nothing in a detention berth,” the MP sergeant replies. “Sir,” he adds after a moment.

The MPs put flex cuffs on our wrists. When they get to Dmitry, he flexes his shoulder muscles just a bit, and the PFC putting the cuffs on him takes an involuntary step back. The sergeant at the door tightens his grip on his pistol.

“Boo,” Dmitry says. He cracks a smile in my direction, and I can’t help but return it. The man is nominally my enemy, and two months ago we may have faced each other on the battlefield, but I like him. I also think he may be just a little bit nuts, or maybe I’m just not used to Russian attitudes yet.

“What exactly are your orders, Sergeant?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“I am to get you on the shuttle and deliver you to the receiving brig at Norfolk. You can talk over the legal stuff with them down there. I’m just a sergeant. Sir.”

Colonel Campbell nods toward the door. “Let’s not waste time, then. After you, Sergeant.”

The MPs march us out of the security booth and through the large airlock that separates Foxtrot concourse from the rest of the station. Out in the main part of Independence, there’s a bit more activity than in the concourse behind us, where
Indy
’s berth is the only occupied one. The civilian yard techs and shuttle jocks going about their business on the main concourse look at us as we pass by, two fleet sailors and an SRA noncom handcuffed and flanked by four armed military police officers.

We walk down the concourse about a hundred meters when the MPs direct us to another concourse to our right.

“Echo,” the sergeant in charge says. “We’re this way.”

“You know that Sergeant Chistyakov here isn’t subject to the UCMJ, right?” I say. “He’s not a POW. The Alliance is going to be pissed when they find out that you crapped all over the treaty.”

“The Alliance can kiss my ass right now,” the sergeant says. “I am just executing orders. Not my circus, not my monkey.”

“You call me monkey, I take electric stick off belt of yours and stick it up your big ass,” Dmitry says matter-of-factly from behind the sergeant.

The MP sergeant stops and turns toward Dmitry, who looks at him with an unconcerned little smile on his face.

“You don’t shut the fuck up and march, I’ll flush your ass out the nearest airlock, Russkie.”

I tense and prepare to jump into the tussle that’s sure to break out any second now. We are cuffed and unarmed, but I bet I can get at least this blustering asshole on the ground before they take us down with their stun sticks.