Haywire (32 page)

The captain wouldn’t have put it past the old man. His temper was a thing of legend. “I know, Sir. I’m sorry. We thought we had the manpower and the tools, but taking on two Titans wasn’t something we could have anticipated. And then there are the pirates that came literally out of the dark.”

“
You’ve got a lot of excuses, I’ll give you that,” Harper said with a less than subtle eye roll. “Fortunately for you, I’m going to give you a chance to redeem yourself. As I understand it, your repair teams were able to get your damaged maneuvering thrusters operational again?

“
Yes, Sir. They aren’t at a hundred percent, but they’ll get us where we need to go.”

Harper curled up the right side of his lips. “And do you know where that is?”

“
I do,” Townsend replied, trying to sound surer than he felt. “In earlier communiqués it was suggested that Mars was their ultimate destination. I thought perhaps that could have been a smokescreen, but now I’m disinclined to believe that.”

“
Based on what?”

“
On our last sensor data of their shuttle as they fled Hygeia. Their trajectory was squarely in line with the Mars conduit. Given their rate of speed and unerring heading, it seems unlikely that they would be trying to establish a false trail. Everything points to Mars.”

Harper looked at him with a steady gaze, his eyes inscrutable. Finally he said, “That’s what our eggheads think too. I’ve been on the horn with Admiral Mixon, and he agrees that while you deserve a chance to redeem yourself, we can’t risk putting all our eggs in your basket again. That’s why, as we speak, the
Halsey
and
Spruance
carrier groups are moving to position around the Mars conduit out at Triton. If at any point it looks like you can’t complete your objective, Admiral Kaiser will pass her ships through and form a blockade around Mars.”

Feeling like he’d been hit with one uppercut after another, Townsend reeled at the assault of information. Admiral Mixon was the Chief of Naval Operations, and for Townsend that meant he was essentially god. If his failure at Hygeia was getting talked about at that level, the pressure for him to redeem himself was crushing. Then factor in the possible blockade of a sovereign Union planet by Admiral Kaiser – also known as The Iron Lady – and the stakes were so high he needed a telescope to see the tip. He gulped air to catch his breath.

“
Yeah, I figured that would get your attention,” Harper said with a growling chuckle. “You’re in the deep end of the pool now, Captain. You screwed the pooch, but we’re giving you a chance to unscrew it. Do you think you can do that, or should I send someone else to do it for you?”

“
I’ll take care of it, Sir,” Townsend replied, hoping like hell he hadn’t just thrown his career down the toilet.

Harper nodded and leaned forward. “Good. To make sure you have all the help you need, we’ve activated covert agents embedded in all of Mar’s major cities, and they’ll be actively searching for your targets. When they say the word, you put the hammer down. Harper out.”

As the screen snapped to black, Townsend caught his reflection in the dark screen, and the man he saw looking back at him wasn’t afraid. The man in his display was strong, capable, and resolute. When he stood up to exit his office and let his crew know their orders, he hoped he could be that man. He’d have to be if he hoped to make it another day.

In an area of space far from normal trade routes, where only the occasional bit of rock would usually be found, a bright light briefly turned the darkness of space into day. It was a remarkable event, and it went completely without notice. As amazing as it was, however, that wasn’t the first time such an event had occurred. Twenty hours earlier, in the same region of the solar system, a similar flash of light had lit up the heavens. When the earlier flash faded, in its place had been left a damaged alien craft barely large enough to be called a shuttle, and aboard it a hibernating Titan had fallen into nightmares of chaos and metal.

The second flash, though, was brighter, and from its swirling maw emerged a ship larger and deadlier than anything ever crafted by human hands, and it was filled by beings who wanted nothing more than to destroy everything in their sight. As the flash dimmed, the giant alien dreadnaught sent a pulse pinging into space, a pulse detectable by only one ship.

Sitting on a metal pallet in the staging area of Puerto de la Sombra, the damaged alien shuttle’s slumbering computer heard the ping and replied. None of the pirates knew what had occurred in their midst, so they were none-the-wiser when millions of kilometers away the alien dreadnaught turned its massive prow in their direction. Space trembled as powerful engines drove the new arrivals forward.

Sadness sat in the center of Shawn’s chest with a weight that threatened to overpower him and send his body hurtling out of the lifeboat taking him to Mars. All his life he’d been surrounded by people, taken care of, but now he was alone. Artemis sat next to him, busily piloting the small ship, but he didn’t turn to her for comfort or understanding. How could he? If he felt isolated, the loneliness she felt had to be crushing. He missed his family, his band, and his girlfriend, but what was that compared to the people she’d fought beside for a hundred years? If anyone needed comforting, it was her.

“
We should m-make good time,” she said after adjusting a knob on their radar display.

“
Were you scared?” he asked, hoping the question didn’t sound condescending or rude.

Artemis looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Scared when?”

Her questions brought Shawn up short. She was right. When? When the Hezrin first arrived? When she became a Titan? When she fought back? There were plenty of moments for fear in all that. “I don’t know. I guess... you seem so . . .”

“
Yes,” she said with a soft laugh, saving him. “When the Hezrin attacked, I-I-I saw firsthand how terrible they were. So… so big. So fast. Relentless. They’d pour like rain into a settlement, and within hours it’d be theirs. The only weapons we had that could hurt them were nukes, but using those was like killing a fly with a grenade. That was why I volunteered for Dr. Groesbeck’s project. I wanted to stop them. I wa-wanted to save lives. If becoming… this... is what it took, then so be it. And – despite all my strength and skill – I’ve been afraid every day since. Afraid we’d fail, afraid everything we’d sacrificed would amount to nothing. B-b-but I never gave into it, Shawn. I never let it beat me. In my heart was the hope that eventually I’d know . . .”

When her voice trailed off, Shawn tried to finish her thought with the only word that made sense. “Peace.”

A small smile lit her face. “I don’t know what that word means anymore, to tell you the truth. I guess tha-a-at’s what happens when you spend a hundred years up to your elbows in blood. I think… I think the only peace I’ll ever have is what I’ll find in a grave.”

The hopelessness Shawn heard in Artemis’s voice pulled at his heart, but before he could say anything a light on the console blinked in bright red flashes.

Artemis’s head snapped down. “We’re nearing the outer orbital boundary of Mars. It looks a bit different than when I last saw-saw it.”

Glad for the distraction, Shawn blinked and replied, “Yeah?”

The Titan nodded and pointed toward the area of space over the planet’s northern pole. “Those mirror arrays were just scaffolding back in my day. They’d lo-o-ooked like gigantic spider webs spreading across space. But now look at them. They shine like jewels.”

“
Thanks to those, the surface temperature rises little by little every year.” There was pride in Shawn’s voice, as though he’d built them himself. “And the ice they melt supplies nearly all the planet’s water needs.”

Artemis laughed softly. “You sound like a commercial.”

“
I’m proud to call Mars home,” he said, refusing to blush or take offense. “It may not be as pretty as Earth right now, but one day it will be. The gas production plants, the bacteria fields, the mirrors… all of that is helping terraform Mars into a paradise. One day it’ll be green, and oceans will roll again. I just wish I could live long enough to see it happen.”

Adjusting their attitude, Artemis flipped a switch and opened their hailing frequencies. “You’re a Titan now. There’s no-no-no telling how long you’ll live.”

He hadn’t thought of that, but the idea of it wasn’t as appealing as he’d thought it would be. One look at the lines around Artemis’s eyes, and the sadness those eyes contained, was enough to make him wish for a normal lifespan. Living for centuries didn’t mean anything if it meant watching the people he loved die of old age, of losing touch with everything that made him who he was. He couldn’t see any joy in a life like that, and the anger he felt toward Artemis turned to sadness. She didn’t deserve his disrespect.

“
About that, I–” he began to say, but before he could speak further she held up a hand to silence him and pressed her other hand against the shuttle’s radio. Her head tilted to the side like a dog craning to hear a sound just out of reach. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“
I’m listening for a way down,” she replied, her tone soft and airy.

“
Down?”

“
To the surface.”

Shawn felt lost. “What do you mean, ‘a way down’? It’s right there. The big orange ball. Can’t miss it.”

“
It’s not that easy,” the Titan replied, her head turning to tilt the other direction and her eyes narrowing to glowing blue slits. “If we try to-o land, orbital traffic control will want documentation. We don’t have any, so they’ll blow us out of the sky long before we can make an approach to Bellona’s landing facilities. That wouldn’t kill us, but it would attract unwanted attention, com-m-mplicating things. I’m trying to find another way down. Now be quiet while I listen.”

Curious, Shawn leaned forward to look at the radio. “Listen to what?”

Artemis shot him a heated look and used her free hand to point out the forward view port. “Those.”

Shawn followed her gesture, and in the distance a group of ships flew in a loose formation. As he stared, more ships appeared beyond those, and then more, and still more beyond. Outside the survey ship were hundreds of starcraft, all of them waiting their turn for permission to descend to the planet below. It was a staggering sight, one he could never have seen without his enhanced vision. “That’s a lot of ships. Which ones are you listening to?”

The Titan tilted her head down, and with barely half a voice she said, “All of them.”

Shawn closed his mouth and settled back into his seat. It was nearly a minute before Artemis shook her head and took the shuttle’s control sticks in hand.

“
Okay, I’ve found one th-that’s landing close to where we want,” she said, turning them to starboard and increasing their speed. “Now, I need you to pay very careful attention to me, Shawn. If this ship had an-any stealth capabilities to it whatsoever I’d hide us in a larger ship’s sensor shadow and take us down under our own power. We can’t do that though, so we’re going to have to take a different tack.”

“
Meaning?” he asked, afraid of what her answer might be.

“
Meaning we’re going to hitch a ri-ide. There’s a passenger ship about to de-orbit, and we’re going to be on it.”

That didn’t sound so bad, though he had no idea how they were going to gain access to the ship. “You mean
in
it, right?”

The Titan shook her head. “No.
On
it. I’m going to get us as close as I can to it witho-o-out setting off proximity alarms, and then after I activate the auto-pilot we’re going to bail and find something to hold onto on its upper hull. I’ve programmed the shuttle to fly a route around the planet while we go down with the lan-n-nding ship so no one will know what happened.”

Shawn didn’t like the way that sounded at all. Floating through space? On his own? And then grabbing hold of a ship and riding it down through the atmosphere? He had to wonder if her insanity wasn’t developing in new, horrifying ways, but her face was all seriousness, as though it was something she’d done before.

“
And then once it lands we sneak through security at the landing pad?” he asked, pushing his fear into a ball and sitting on it as best he could.

The Titan shook her head a second time. “To-o-oo many chances for problems. No, once we’re beneath radar level we’re going to let go and freefall the remainder of the way into the Noctis Labyrinthus canyons near Bellona. There are several ma-aintenance hatches that lead from Bellona’s lower levels out to the Labyrinth, so we’ll use one of those to get into the city.”

“
Who do you think I am?” Shawn asked. His face numbed as blood drained from it. “I’m… I’m no soldier. I don’t… hell, I don’t know the first thing about freefalling and… whatever else. This is crazy. I can’t do all that.”

A hard look crossed over Artemis’s eyes, but then her face softened, and she said, “Shawn, you’re capable of much more than you think you are. The problem is with your mind. Your bo-o-ody is ready for anything, but it takes awhile for the brain to catch up. There’s so much you have to unlearn. But you won’t be doing this on your own. I’ll be there. Just follow my lead, and you’ll be fine. I promise.”

He didn’t find her words all that comforting. “Easy for you to say. You were probably born for this stuff. I’m still in high school. I like kissing my girlfriend and playing music with my band. I’m not… I’m no hero.”