Gestapo Mars (23 page)

“Can they get here in time to block us?”

“No.”

“Then fuck ’em.”

My eyes were locked on the freighter behind us. I realized I’d been holding my breath, forced myself to let it out. We’d enter the wormhole in seconds.

“Oh, no.”

I frowned at Poppins. “What is it?”

“It’s been too long,” she said. “The freighter’s engines should have overheated by now.”

“Could the Coriandon engineers have reversed the overload somehow?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought we were past the point of no return.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“It’s alien technology, okay? Damn it, I did my best. This is why we should have stayed on board. We could have made sure.”

She was right.

Damn her, she was right.

“Well, what the hell do we do now?”

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

We were upon the wormhole. No time to ponder. I grabbed the throttle, ready to turn the ship around. “We’re going back.”

“What?”

“If that fleet gets through the wormhole, we’re screwed. We’ve got to go back and—”

The rear-view display flared blinding white. I shut my eyes and turned away. A split second later the shockwave hit us, slamming the ship, and throwing us against our restraining belts, carrying us along. The shuttle tumbled and threatened to rattle apart. Sparks danced across the console as systems overloaded. The displays winked out and the cockpit filled with smoke.

Poppins was screaming, but I could barely hear her over the blaring alarms and the groan of metal.

And then we were in the wormhole, swallowed by gray silence.

P
oppins hung limp against her restraining straps. Blood dripped down one ear.

I coughed. A thick layer of smoke hung in the cockpit.

“Vent,” I said.

Nothing happened. The computer was offline. Emergency systems kept the life support going, but for all intents and purposes we were dead in space.

At least we’d come through the wormhole.

Poppins stirred and groaned.

“Vent.”

“I tried that already.”

“Did we do it?” she asked. “Is the wormhole closed?”

“I don’t know.”

She tapped at the computer, trying to bring up the scanners.

“Everything’s dead,” I told her. “Almost everything. Shockwave hit us hard.”

“I’m tapping into the reserve batteries,” she said. “Give me a second.”

I waited. A drink would have been nice.

Poppins sighed, flopped back into her chair, relieved laughter bubbling out of her.

“It’s gone. The wormhole collapsed in on itself. It worked.”

The radio crackled. Static then a voice.

“Shuttle, this is the
Pride of Nuremberg
. Anyone left alive over there?”

I laughed, too. “Nice to see you again,
Pride of Nuremberg
. If you can arrange a tow for us, we’d love to report to Admiral Ashcroft that we’ve just killed a wormhole.”

* * *

They towed the bludgeoned shuttle to the battle hulk’s hangar bay.

The gangplank went down and Poppins and I emerged into a roar of applause. Crew and officers from all over the ship had turned out to crowd the hangar bay and cheer our triumphant return. I took it all in with a grain of salt, remembering Kolostomy and the other troopers we’d left behind.

Poppins clearly had little experience of being the center of attention. Her smile was an odd mix of pleasure, irritation, and bashfulness. People patted us on the back, shouting “good job” and other pleasantries.

The crowd parted as the admiral headed straight for us. When he reached us he pumped Poppins’s hand, then mine, grinning from ear to ear.

“You crafty son of a bitch, Sloan,” he shouted over the din. “Part of me thought that plan didn’t have a snowball’s chance on Mercury, and I wouldn’t have bet a single credit any of you would have made it back alive.”

“More of us should have,” I growled.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Ashcroft said. “You either, Poppins. Only so many miracles you can work. We’ll mourn the dead later, and make the enemy pay for each and every one of them.”

He leaned in close to talk into my ear. “You hurt? You need to see the doc or anything?”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“Good. I need to see you in the briefing room in an hour. We’ll let the crew have their feel-good moment for now. Good for morale, but the worst is yet to come.”

“Yeah. I know,” I said.

* * *

I had an hour. I showered, and was pretty sure I could spend the rest of my life in there. I stumbled out and got dressed—somebody had put a fresh laundered jumpsuit in my quarters. Fresh underwear. Fresh socks.

The door chimed.

“Come in.”

The door slid open, and she rushed in, threw her arms around me and kissed me hard. She clung to me, desperate, the kiss going on so long I thought it was my new life. I put my arms around her and drew her close, feeling her slim body against mine.

* * *

Years later we pulled away from one another, breathless. She wiped tears from her eyes.

“They told me you weren’t coming back,” Cindy said. “They said you and the rest were sacrificing yourselves.”

“We were supposed to,” I said. “As usual, I fucked it up.”

She laughed and sniffed and wiped away more tears.

“When you went away I… I don’t know. I felt lost.” She turned away. “I sound stupid.”

I took her chin in my hand and turned her back toward me, her eyes huge and hopeful and filled with tears.

“It’s not stupid,” I said.

I kissed her, gently this time, my lips barely brushing hers, and I felt her tremble in my arms.

“It’s not over, is it?” she asked.

“No.”

“You might die tomorrow.”

“We might all die,” I said.

She looked up at me, a request so plain and basic in her face, I felt my knees go weak.

“I have to speak with the admiral.”

“I know,” she said. “Can I wait here?”

“Yes.”

I kissed her again and left before I could say something to ruin it.

* * *

No 3-D display this time. We simply sat around the briefing table, and Admiral Ashcroft laid it on the line.

“If the other fleet arrives, we’re pretty much fucked.”

It was me and a few other senior officers. Poppins was there, too, looking like she might crap her pants at any moment. Still, her part in swiping the Coriandon freighter and collapsing the wormhole had earned her a seat at the adult table.

“We have Poppins and Sloan to thank for closing the wormhole and preventing those ships from joining the fray,” Ashcroft continued, “but intelligence reports that the second fleet is much bigger than we anticipated. They’re coming through the further wormhole, and if they arrive to join the Coriandon forces already bearing down on Mars, there’s no scenario in which we can reasonably expect to be victorious. In short, we’re seven hours from Mars, and the other Coriandon fleet is nine hours away.”

“Two hours difference,” I said. “That’s a pretty narrow window for winning a war.”

“I know,” the admiral said, “but we’ve gotten word to our people on Mars, and they know we’re coming. They’re going to attack with everything they’ve got, and we’re going to come in full steam from the other direction. We’ll catch the Coriandon fuckheads in the middle. If we can win before the other fleet arrives, then they might figure it’s not worth the effort, and turn back.

“It’s our only shot.”

There was muttering around the table, but finally everyone agreed.

“The plan is simple and straightforward,” Ashcroft said, “and there’s one thing that might tip things to our advantage.” He nodded. “Go ahead, Poppins.”

Poppins gestured toward the middle of the table, and a 3-D display blipped to life, rotating slowly so we could all see it from every angle. It was some kind of enormous spaceship—of Coriandon design by the look of it. The diagnostic information scrolling below it told me the ship was at least three times the size of the battle hulk.

“One of these will likely be leading the enemy fleet,” Poppins said. “We call them class five ships, but roughly translated, the Coriandons call them…” She briefly consulted the notes on her tablet. “…the biggest turd in the bowl. Oh. That’s not very nice.”

“Fucking alien idioms,” Ashcroft said. “Never mind, Poppins. Carry on.”

“Coriandon ship captains aren’t independent thinkers like Reich captains,” Poppins said. “A single central commander—located aboard the class five ship—will almost certainly direct the entire attack. Eliminating the class five and the central commander should disrupt their strategies enough to make them withdraw.”

“Can the battle hulk take on the class five?” I asked Ashcroft.

“No chance,” the admiral said. “Even if we weren’t completely banged up, toe-to-toe with a beast like that just isn’t an option. I’ll be leading the rest of the fleet against the other ships. It should be a fair match with the class five out of the way.”

I could see where this was going.

“Why do I think getting the class five out of the way is the tricky part?” I said.

“Tricky, yes, but there’s a way,” Poppins said. “About a year ago, some of our operatives on New Bohemia got close to a class five and took some detailed readings. They also smuggled out some schematics. New Bohemia is right on the edge of Coriandon space, and they’ve been warning us for nearly a decade a Coriandon invasion was imminent.”

“So did this detailed examination of the schematics reveal any weakness in the class five?” I said. Unless the answer was yes, we were screwed.

“It did,” Poppins said. “The class five is so big and so well defended that the Coriandons don’t consider a single, one-manned fighter to be a threat.” Poppins gestured at the 3-D display again. It spun and rotated, zooming in on a round opening on the bottom of the hull nearly all the way aft. It was about forty feet wide and appeared to spiral open and closed, giving it a vaguely sphincter-like look.

“Examining the schematics indicates that Coriandon technology is highly advanced in almost every area except one,” Poppins explained. “Plumbing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Plumbing?”

Poppins gestured again, drawing a line from the sphincter along the belly of the ship to the center. “A single zip ship can fly along this waste disposal tunnel, fire a timed torpedo at the central flushing station, and get out again before it detonates. The chain reaction will simultaneously back up every toilet on the class five. Our engineers are confident the vessel won’t be able to stand up to that kind of stress. All the pipes will burst nearly at once and they’ll be neck deep in their own yuck.”

I frowned. Something about the plan didn’t ring true, and anything that simple seemed doomed to failure. What sort of morons would fail to guard such an obvious weakness? Yet the more I thought about it, the more the idea grew on me.

Lends new meaning to “the shit hitting the fan,”
I mused.

She turned away, looking off at some imaginary faraway thing, a wistful expression on her face.

“Many Bohemians died to bring us this information.”

“We’ve managed to scrounge up enough zip ships for a small squadron,” Ashcroft said, “but we’re critically short on pilots. What we really need is somebody with a cool head and iron in his spine to make the torpedo run.”

All eyes in the room turned to me.

Oh, just fuck you, people
.

I
walked slowly back to my quarters, lost in thought. Ashcroft had suggested that I get some sleep. I didn’t see how that was possible.

Still, I was tired. So very tired. Since I’d been awakened and taken out of the cryo-chamber, I’d teetered on the brink of one crisis only to tumble into the next and the next and the next. The notion of a long, peaceful sleep seemed like the most pleasant thing in the galaxy.

Until I entered my quarters, and Meredith was waiting for me.

“From the look on your face, I guess they told you,” Meredith said.

“You know the plan?”

She tapped the metal disk on the side of her head. “I told you I’d been taking accelerated training. Guess I should have mentioned it was for piloting a zip ship.”

“You’re going?”

She nodded.

“You might want to reconsider,” I said. “Chances are good we’re not going to make it back from this one.”

“We know,” said a voice from the corner.

Cindy stepped into view, nervously nibbling her bottom lip.

“We’ve had a little talk,” Meredith said.

Shit.

“You have my attention.”

“We’re grown-up modern people, and we know tomorrow might be the end for all of us.” Meredith moved closer, put a soft hand on the side of my face. “It’s a stupid time to be competing. It’s a time to share, don’t you think?”
Oh…
I thought.

Cindy moved closer, too, put a shy hand on my chest.

“This is okay with you?” I asked her.

Her eyes were both frightened and excited. She nodded quickly, like she didn’t want to give herself a chance to change her mind.

I bent and kissed her gently as Meredith’s hand unzipped my jumpsuit and reached inside. I returned the favor, unzipping her, my other hand pulling Cindy close, the gentle kiss becoming more earnest as our tongues connected. I turned and kissed Meredith.

Cindy tore at her own clothing, anxious to get undressed, and that spurred Meredith and me into action, too, all of us shimmying out of jumpsuits and kicking away underwear.

Fuck sleep.

The three of us tumbled to the bed, clinging to one another. Meredith scooted back against the wall, sitting up and spreading her legs. She pulled Cindy back against her so that her head rested on Meredith’s breasts. Meredith cradled the girl, offering her to me, and I remembered that while she might have had the appearance of a twenty-two-year-old woman, Meredith was mature, and definitely confident. She didn’t need to be first—not in this case.

On the other hand Cindy was shy, and needed to be guided, which Meredith was more than willing to do. She cupped Cindy’s small breasts, petting gently.