Infernal Sky (15 page)

Even if Hidalgo happened to be a martinet butthead he was still our CO. Whatever chances we had for a successful mission rested on his shoulders. That's what pissed off the dynamic duo of Arlene and me. I wanted Hidalgo to be good. I didn't want him to screw up. I wanted him to be a man I could trust, a competent man.

As I sat with my back to the wall, and watched the captain's profile as he chatted amiably with Arlene, I wondered what he would do if he realized how she felt about him. Maybe he'd shrug and just get back to doing his job. A man who does a good job doesn't have to worry about his back unless treacherous skunks are around. There were none of those under his command.

“Do we know which Gate to use?” Albert asked Hidalgo.

I almost answered. Had to watch that—chain of command.

Hidalgo answered: “You remember the director gave us the access codes and teleportation coordinates for one of the Gates.” He smiled at Arlene and me. “You heroes need to work out among yourselves our best route to the right Gate once we land. Commander Taylor will get us as close to it as is humanly possible.”

For a brief second I thought he was being sarcastic when he called us heroes. Arlene and I could be telepathic at times like this. The same thought flickered in her eyes. The next second the feeling passed—for me, at least. Hidalgo had spoken straight from the heart.

“You men,” he said, and Arlene warmed up at that, “are the valuable cargo on the
Bova.”
Same as the way we treated Jill as a case for special handling on the road to Los Angeles. “When we hit Phobos, I'll need the best intelligence you can provide.”

“Conditions may have changed,” said Arlene.

“Yes. Or they might be the same as when you left. Whatever they are, you two are better acquainted with the situation than any other humans alive.”

I was glad that Arlene was participating in this discussion. “When you came over, we were discussing whether there'd still be air on the different levels.”

“We'll wear space suits regardless,” said Hidalgo. “If everything goes according to plan, we have no idea what's waiting for us on the other side.”

“It's a mission of faith,” Albert pointed out, and no one disagreed. “We must assume those on the other side will have the means to keep us alive. We can only
pack so many hours of air. If we find ourselves under pressure we could save some of our own air for what's on the other side of the Gate.”

“We'll be under pressure even if there's air,” Arlene joked, reminding us about the doom demons.

“Maybe not,” said Albert. “The devils may have abandoned Phobos Base.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble, Albert,” I said. “I'm surprised Arlene didn't remind you of what we discovered about the Gates. No matter what you take with you, you wind up naked on the other side. So you're dead right about having faith in the aliens on the other side.”

“True,” said Arlene. “That's been our experience. But we'd feel foolish if we didn't prepare and then found out for the first time that a Gate trip doesn't mean a strip tease.” My buddy had a point.

“We've been lucky up until now,” said Hidalgo. “We know the enemy has ships going back and forth between Phobos and Earth. The
Bova
uses a TACAN system, beaming out a signal showing them the bearing and distance of the ship. We may be the low-budget special, energy-wise, but we're not flying blind.”

I hate flying blind.

“Are they using Deimos for anything?” asked Arlene.

“Not so far as the director and his team have found out. You two did such a good job of wrecking it that they may have given up on it.”

“Outstanding,” said Albert. 'Course he was looking at Arlene instead of me.

“We've been fortunate not to run into the enemy, but space is big, isn't it?” The way Hidalgo said that made me wonder if he was making a joke.

The next moment he did! “You know, Lieutenant Riley told me a funny one,” he began. I noticed that he'd been pretty chummy with the radar intercept officer, but why not? Same rank attracts, especially between services. I'd hit it off with Jennifer, the PO2. I rarely called her by her last name.

Whatever the reason, it was good to see Hidalgo being human, even if we had to listen to his joke: “How can you tell the difference between the offense and defense of a doom demon? Give up? You can't tell any difference because even when we're kicking their butts, they're still offensive.”

Discipline and duty pay off. I made myself laugh. There should be medals for this kind of service.

After the officer joke, Hidalgo left us alone. I was all set to resume my song, figuring anything would go down well after that joke.

Arlene headed me off at the pass. “Albert,” she said quickly, “have you found any good books to read in the navy's box?”

“Lots of old books,” he said. “The one I've read twice is
Bureaucracy
by Ludwig von Mises. He wrote about freedom when the only threat to it was other human beings. He said capitalism is good because it ‘automatically values every man according to the services he renders to . . . his fellow men.' ”

“No friend of socialism, is he?” asked Arlene.

Albert didn't hear the playfulness in her voice. He gave her a straight answer. “The book was written during World War II. He uses Hitler and Stalin as his two perfect models of socialism in practice.”

Arlene was up on the subject: “They didn't kill as many people as the demons have, but not for lack of trying.”

I contributed my bit. “Back at Hawaii Base I
overheard a female lab tech say what has happened is good for the human race because the extermination of billions of people has made the survivors give up their petty selfishness and band together for the common good.”

“Jesus Christ!” said Arlene.

I noticed Albert didn't even wince any longer when she talked that way.

“Not everyone fights for the same things,” said Albert with a shrug. “We do.”

“Close enough,” I agreed.

“Let's have a toast,” said Arlene. “Something better than water.”

“I have something,” said Albert. While he pushed off in the direction of his secret stash (Paul had given him some good stuff), Arlene went over to her couch and dug out a book she'd been reading from the box. She'd always been very adept at maneuvering in free fall. I stayed put.

When she got back, I admitted, “I wish they had more of those magnetic boots so they could spare me a pair.”

“The navy doesn't have enough for its own personnel,” she reminded me. “Just be grateful we have a skeleton crew or there wouldn't have been acceleration couches for us.”

“Yeah, tough marines don't need luxuries like a place to park our butts. We don't need internal organs, either. Just stack us up like cordwood in the back of the bus.”

“Bus?”

“You know what I mean. What do you have in your hand?”

“Cyrano de Bergerac,”
she announced, holding a volume up. “I didn't expect to find my favorite play in
the navy's box. Since I don't have Albert's memory, I want to read you the ideal passage for my toast.”

While she flipped the yellowing pages, Albert returned bearing gifts—a soup-bag. His big grin told me the content of the bag was anything but soup.

“Found it!” chirped Arlene. While Albert prepared the nipple we would all use to partake, she read to us: “ ‘I marched on, all alone, to meet the devils. Overhead, the moon hung like a gold watch at the fob of heaven; Till suddenly some Angel rubbed a cloud, as it might be his handkerchief, across the shining crystal, and—the night came down.' ”

She cleared her throat and said huskily, “May we bring down the eternal night of space upon the enemy.”

As I took a sip of Burgundy wine, I felt that we were the Three Musketeers ready to fight the demon pukes . . . in whatever form they might take.

F
ly was right. We were back on Phobos again, where a zombie once was a man. We didn't see any zombies this time. I was glad about that. They reminded me of Dodd. It's bad enough losing a lover
the normal way without seeing him turn into a shambling travesty of someone I once loved. In my nightmares I still heard him calling: “Arlene, you can be one of us.”

They say you can't go home again. But you can return to hell if you're crazy and you deliberately take a one-way ticket to Phobos.

The crew of the
Bova
had acquitted themselves admirably when it was time to deliver their cargo to the infernal regions. Phobos is so small that it's a real challenge to a space pilot. Deimos was a tougher port when it was still in its orbit around Mars. It was an unseemly rock covered by protrusions that could rip a ship if you miscalculated the angle or speed. Phobos was much smoother and rounder—more what we Earthers expected of a moon.

“How can they call something only ten miles long a moon?” Taylor asked as she did the painstaking maneuvers to rendezvous with Phobos. We were only a few miles away, matching orbits with the little black patch blotting out the stars. I counted myself fortunate that the commander had agreed to let me come up front to watch us “return.” Our new pukehead friends kept joking that Fly and I were coming home. All the kidding may have made it easier to swing the invitation for Albert and me. He was as happy as a kid as we stood together in the hatchway and saw what the skipper saw.

There was no need to strap down when the gravity field of Phobos was virtually nonexistent. The artificial gravity areas produced by alien engineers had no effect on the rest of this glorious piece of space rock, especially not to Commander Taylor who had to do the stunt piloting.

Back in the UAC days, her job would have been a lot easier. The boys on the ground would send up a shuttle and bring us down without the ship even needing to land. Now the idea was to keep from being seen. There didn't seem to be any lights or activities on this side of Phobos. A good sign. I was hoping that if the moon hadn't been abandoned we might at least have reached it during a period when most of the bad guys were away. I wanted to laugh at the thought of a skeleton crew of . . . bonies.

The Big Four didn't need all this special attention. We were willing to hop down. Paratroopers of the Infinite! We could suit up and use mini-rockets to come in like mini-spaceships. With a bit of luck we wouldn't smash ourselves to a fine red spray—an appropriate death with Mars hovering over our heads, like the god of war.

Now for the first time Commander Taylor allowed herself to be testy with her marine passengers. “This is no time for a gung-ho kamikaze operation! The mission is a failure if you die before you meet what's on the other side of the Gate. We know how important your mission is and that the
Bova
is expendable. Why do you think we carted a few UAC goodies along just for you? Finding UAC stuff isn't easy anymore but you need every advantage. And remember that we will remain in this area until you return. If Phobos is too dangerous, we'll wait farther out. When any of you return from the mission, you will be greeted by someone . . . unless all of us are dead. Meanwhile, you will have the safest passage to Phobos that it is within my power to grant. Now not another word about paratrooping in.”

She'd made such a big production out of it that I
took my chance for Albert to finally see a space skipper do her stuff; and I wasn't averse to getting an eyeful myself. The landing took a full hour once Taylor was in position to touch down ever so gently on the moon. I wasn't nervous, even though “Phobos” means “fear.”

Hidalgo took command with grace. I was starting to feel more comfortable about him. I wasn't sure what had changed. He'd had us keep our gear in top condition aboard the
Bova,
but he hadn't been neurotic about it. Plus there was only so much exacting inspection he could do in the near-dark.

Hidalgo was beginning to assume his proper place in the pecking order as the fire team commander. The problem he had was that this position should have been held by the team member with the most combat experience. For this war, that narrowed down the list to two living marines: Fly and me. Next came Albert because he'd fought the monsters with us, close up and dirty. When Colonel Hooker saddled us with Hidalgo the test immediately became: is he an asset or extra baggage? I liked traveling light.

This was the last place for a know-it-all to try to assume command. Fly and I had the most firsthand information and we were still shooting in the dark most of the time. Hidalgo asked the right questions. He listened. Even though we'd never had the opportunity to train together to the point where we could operate as one perfect fighting machine, three of us did have this seasoning. With some applied intelligence, Hidalgo could be the brain.

Fly and I had worked out the route. Captain Hidalgo sent us in doing a simple echelon formation, with Albert taking the point. Then came Fly, then
Hidalgo, and I brought up the rear. I kind of liked it that my beloved and I were doing all the security sweep area between us.

Albert was a good marksman and he had a brand new Sig-Cow. He filled out his space suit better than the rest of us. We'd worried there might not be one to fit him, but the mission had been too well planned for that. Naturally, Albert's suit was at the bottom of the pile.

Seeing him from behind was like watching him grow in height as he looked up at Mars. The distant sun didn't illuminate the scenery too well, but the
Bova
would light our way as we searched for the right facility. Mars looked more orange than red to me; at least it did in this light. I'm sure that Albert would have loved it if it had been the color of a spoiled pumpkin—pie, that is.

It felt strange to deliberately reenter hell.

Half-normal gravity returned. The lights were on. My heart sank, and not from putting on weight all of a sudden. Since the gravity zones were still functioning, I figured the enemy must still be around. This conclusion might not have been entirely rational, though. The gravity zones had been operating long before the enemy arrived. It was possible the things couldn't be turned off. Call it woman's intuition, but I figured the red meanies would have trashed everything somehow if they didn't need it anymore.