Dire Steps (12 page)

But Kitrick was seeing enemy movement that was not showing up on the scanners. Mortas flipped the goggles back to night vision and carefully scanned the wall of foliage to his west. Nothing.

Behind him, the night erupted in a series of sharp explosions that Mortas recognized as chonk rounds. The grenade-­launcher fire was followed immediately by the steady booming of Force machine guns, then Scorpion fire joined in.

“They've seen us! We're engaging!” Kitrick shouted, his transmission bringing the battle right into Mortas's helmet. “Approximately an enemy squad one hundred yards to our east!”

“Hold your position, Kitrick! That is an order!” Dassa shouted, anger in the words. Mortas was baffled for just a moment, but then realized that the volley of chonk rounds had been too well coordinated to be a reaction to the enemy discovering Kitrick's position. Chomping at the bit, smarting over having missed the fight on Fractus, the veteran lieutenant had created an excuse to chase the enemy passing his position.

The sounds of a few Sim rifles came across the night sky when Third Platoon's fire slackened. Flipping to overhead imagery, Mortas now saw that Kitrick's entire platoon was on the move, two hundred yards from where they'd been, three squads identifiable as oval clusters of men pushing through the brush.

Mortas was straining to see any indication of the enemy when an enormous explosion detonated to the east, right where Kitrick's men would be.

 

CHAPTER NINE

A
yliss was adrift in an ocean of cold water, but there was nothing she could do about it. Too weak even to force herself into full consciousness, she felt her body descending into oblivion for unknown lengths of time before rising toward the surface without quite getting there. Her brain was packed with cotton, and the bucking engine in her core had turned into a blast furnace.

She couldn't tell if she was dreaming or not, but fragments of what had to be reality kept coming to her. Hands swabbing her face with damp sponges, followed by scattered phrases of encouragement and sympathy. An enormous paw on her forehead, and a voice she remembered from decades before. “Don't die on me, little bear.”

Floating downward again, shocked to have forgotten the name from her childhood, when the huge man had been Big Bear and she had been Little Bear. Remembering the night of her mother's funeral, when she'd finally been returned to her home, finally away from the minders and handlers and toadies who only wanted to use her to get to her father. The enormous hands and the broad chest, holding her while she'd cried for the loss of both her parents, her mother because she was dead and her father because he seemed not to care at all.

Tears flowed from her eyes, and she moaned in anguish.

“It's all right, Little Bear. Big Bear is here.”

W
alking down the corridor, still in the body armor he'd been wearing all day and all night, Blocker forced himself to ignore his fatigue. An hour earlier, sitting with Ayliss, he'd heard the gunfire and explosions up on the hill. Suspecting that Selkirk was somehow involved, and believing that yet another of their limited options had been taken off the table. Ayliss had refused to enter the mining compound before losing consciousness, and whatever destruction had taken place there since then suggested that they were no longer welcome. Hemsley's tunnel settlement was barred to them as well unless Selkirk had made amends with the veterans, so they were stuck right where they were. If open warfare broke out, Blocker and his party were directly in the line of fire.

His small security detail was positioned at key points all over the building, armed and armored, but they wouldn't last long once the heavy weapons on the mining perimeter came into play. Something about that sneaky Hemsley told Blocker that the veterans had more than rifles at their disposal, and he stopped himself from considering what would happen in such a cross fire.

Most of the building was dark, but a dull glow emanated from the room where the strange commo guy from the settlement, Ewing, had set up shop. He'd walked up the slope on his own while they'd been getting Ayliss settled, and volunteered to help with their communications. Blocker initially told him to get lost, but had relented when the self-­confessed drug user explained his unexpected offer of help.

“First Sergeant doesn't let me man the radios anymore. It's the only thing I was ever good at, and I'm not doing it.”

Shorthanded, Blocker had relented. He'd been amazed when Ewing not only proved reliable on radio watch, but also boosted the power of their signals through a complicated relay involving Zone Quest's orbital satellites. When asked if ZQ knew about this piggybacking, Ewing had merely grinned.

“Hi, Blocker.” Ewing removed a set of headphones. “I tried to request a ship like you asked, but the Step's been suspended.”

Blocker lowered himself into a chair. “You know those never last very long.”

“This one might. I just received the all-­points announcement that the Step will be unavailable for at least a day. That went out over the Bounce, so they're not trying to keep it quiet. Command has been ordered to plan for a suspension that could last indefinitely.”

“They give any reason?”

“No, so I asked around. The chatter says there's a major search under way in a ­couple of different sectors. Maybe somebody important went missing.”

Blocker exhaled with a loud sigh, leaning forward and rubbing his eyes. A Step suspension of that magnitude could only mean Chairman Mortas, and only hours earlier they'd received the news that Olech and Reena had been married on Celestia. If Ayliss's father disappeared, their position on this planet was even more perilous than he'd thought.

“At least things can't get a lot worse.” The old soldier in him regretted the words as soon as they came out, so he changed the subject. “You're doing a good job here. Just why did Hemsley ban you from using the settlement radios?”

A mischievous smirk flashed across Ewing's features. In the room's bright light he looked almost skeletal, his fatigues too large and his skin too pale. “I kept tapping into the deep-­space feeds, all the echoes from the places man has never visited. You ever tune in to that?”

“No. I imagine you gotta be high to appreciate something like that.”

“Not as much as you'd think.” Ewing winked at him. “You remind me of First Sergeant. You actually give a shit about your ­people.”

“You take the job, you take the responsibility.”

“That's what I mean. Hemsley's not classified as a colonist. He reached retirement, and he was just waiting for transport home when they temporarily put him in charge of our group. We were a bunch of odds and ends, and Command didn't know where to put us, so they had him counting our heads every day at the transient personnel center. That's all he was expected to do, but he took the time to find out about every one of us, what we'd done in the Force, where we were from, all that stuff.

“So one day this captain comes by and says we're all getting sent to this planet where ZQ would probably give us jobs, and First Sergeant tells him that's not what we agreed to when we elected to become colonists. So the captain asks him why he cares, points out that First Sergeant is retiring, and that he'll be going home as soon as we're gone. And you know what Hemsley does right then? He says he's postponing his retirement until he sees us settled someplace.”

Ewing smiled at the memory. “Can you imagine anybody doing something like that for a grab bag full of strangers? And that was long before Chairman Mortas made his big announcement about giving the colonists control of the planets.”

Shocked by the story and astounded that he hadn't known it, Blocker was about to ask a question when a communications bud in one of his ears hissed at him. It was one of the roof guards.

“Lone individual approaching from the settlement. Looks like that Banshee that was here earlier.”

Blocker stood, knowing what the news would be but hoping he was wrong. Trying to find a reason why a lone veteran would be visiting, and why Selkirk had not yet returned.

Moving quickly down the corridor again, telling the guards to let the messenger through, and seeing Tin when he got to the first floor. Still wearing the black fatigues and the dark bandana, the story easy to read in eyes that poked out from fresh black camouflage paint. The Banshee shook her head minutely when he came up to her, and he could have uttered her words before she did.

“I'm sorry. We're all sorry. Selkirk went into the compound with one of our ­people, and they got nailed just before the gunships went up. God knows how he made it over the wire, but we've got the body in the tunnel.”

Confused by the words, startled to be so hurt by a report he'd received or issued so many times before, of a good man dead, and wondering how he was going to break it to Ayliss when she recovered. If she recovered. Lessons from past experiences kicked in, reminding him to make sure.

“You're certain it's Selkirk?”

“Yes. He's dead.”

A
yliss's illness reached its peak a short time later. Her infrequent moments of lucidity had become fewer and fewer until she'd lapsed into complete delirium, filling her mind with memories, dreams, and outright hallucinations.

She started out back at Unity, in a briefing room with her father and Reena. The daily classes had usually combined tutorials on the players she might face in her new role with lessons Olech and Reena had learned over the years. At first Ayliss had found the encounters unbearably dull, and had only managed to stay focused because they represented one more step toward the chaotic environment she longed to enter.

“You keep telling me to make sure everyone leaves a negotiation or even a confrontation with something, to keep them on our side. If that's been your approach, how come you seem to end up killing so many ­people?”

Olech and Reena had exchanged glances, having noticed Ayliss's fixation on those times when they'd had to exercise deadly force.

“Because, as you already know from your own experience, there are some ­people who can't be reasoned with.” Reena had given her a significant look. “You can debate them, you can befriend them, you can even try to placate them, but in the end they'll prove they're not interested in anything but being a problem.”

Olech had joined in. “And then you're not only justified in removing them—­you're a fool not to.”

“But what if they haven't done anything that justifies killing them? Something small . . . like going back on an agreement?” Ayliss had raised her eyebrows at her father, and he'd understood her true question.

“Blocker's been telling you about your mother again, I see.”

“He just wants me to get the full story. Warts and all.”

“All right. What did he tell you?”

“He said that President Larkin tried to enlist your support when you were a junior senator, and that you agreed to go along until mother saw a way to turn the whole thing to your advantage.”

Olech and Reena exchanged glances, and Ayliss was pleased to have discovered a part of his political past with which Reena was unfamiliar.

“Larkin wanted to take the Force promotion system out of the hands of the Interplanetary Senate. He recognized that some of the senior officers in the war zone were making tactical decisions based on the politics of their home worlds and not on military exigencies. I'd seen that at firsthand and knew it to be true, so I agreed to help him.”

“But mother talked you out of it.”

“Larkin didn't understand the role the corporations were already beginning to play in the war zone. Outfits like Zone Quest had strong allies in the Senate, and it was important for them to secure access to resource-­rich planets as they were captured. Having sympathetic commanders in the right places was a good way to do that.”

“So you agreed to help President Larkin, then switched sides when it was time to vote.”

“He never forgave me for that. But your mother was right. He wasn't going to get what he wanted, and by changing my vote I landed some very important friends.”

Her body surrounded with cold packs, Ayliss twitched on the bed. Blocker continued swabbing her face.

Ayliss's fever dream jumped just then, to a high platform outside a secret research facility on a planet called Echo. Ayliss experienced a thrill upon recognizing the location and the individual who'd gone out on that platform alone with her. Python, the man who had almost trapped her in a scandal that would have ruined her along with Olech.

But the hallucination was different from the reality. Large and strong, Python was laughing at her even as she saw how close he stood to the low railing. He spoke mocking words that he'd never uttered in real life.

“Look at you. So smart, so sly, think you're as sharp as your mother was, and what's happened? Poisoned just like she was, going to die just like she did, and going to miss all the fun. Just like she did.”

Fear and rage blended together at the goading, and she rushed forward with her hands out. Reliving the moment, that supremely marvelous moment, when she'd sent him tumbling over the high railing, his pants around his ankles. Seeing the expression of surprise and terror, feeling his weight shifting past the point of no return, her entire body singing with adrenaline as she shoved him over. Almost following him, but catching the railing and then watching, awestruck and ecstatic, as he fell away and slammed into the turf far, far below. A rush of excitement and relief and discovery had blasted through her brain.

Her fever broke at that moment, peaking and falling away just as the sensation of joyous conquest had slowly receded within her when she'd finished off the stricken Python with a rock.

“H
ello, Blocker. How is the Minister?”

Station Manager Rittle looked out at him from a console in the communications room. As Blocker had noted at their first meeting, it was impossible to read the man. Blocker put up his guard before responding.

“She's on the mend. It seems it was just a NOA.”

Rittle nodded, two old space hands speaking the same language. “I'm pleased to hear that. I would have visited personally, but the attack on our compound has left my security staff a little uneasy.”

“I heard an explosion, but was tending to the Minister. I thought you'd had an accident with an ammunition store.”

“The destruction of two gunships makes a lot more noise than that. And it was no accident.”

“What can I do for you, Rittle?”

“You strike me as a reasonable man, Blocker.”

“That I am. Unless, of course, the Minister's safety is concerned. Then I'm the most unreasonable man you'd ever meet.”

“That wasn't an attempt to co-­opt you. I have some new information that I need to share with you and the Minister.”

Blocker concentrated on keeping his face bland, loosening the muscles with a will. Selkirk's body was in the tunnels, but the dead sapper who'd accompanied him had not made it out. He was presumed dead, but if he'd been taken alive Rittle would be able to force a confession out of him. Even if found dead, the man's background was shady at best and could be used against them.

“I'm listening.”

“You already heard the Step has been suspended?”