“Don’t think he has it in him to take someone out?”
“Oh, I know he does,” she says. “Don’t let the guy fool you with that antique pop gun on his belt. I’ve been in his office a few times. He has a ready pack sitting in the corner. Hardshell laminate armor, all magazine pouches loaded up, and an M-66C in a locked bracket right next to that. It’s all dolled up with zero-mag battle optics. And the finish on it is so grungy, I guarantee you it sees plenty of use at the range. Our constable is a bona fide gunfighter.”
“Can you imagine him in an infantry squad? He could damn near carry an M-80 in each hand. Biggest hands I’ve ever . . .”
I trail off as Sergeant Fallon looks over her shoulder. We’re not alone on this section of the Ellipse, but the foot traffic is light right now, and I notice the sounds of military boots on concrete behind us just a fraction of a moment later. We turn and see the three SI troopers from the bar coming up quickly behind us, and none of them look like they’re in the mood for an amicable chat. They come to a stop maybe five meters away.
“Care to continue our discussion from earlier, Sergeant?” the SI master sergeant says.
“That’s Master Sergeant to you,” Sergeant Fallon answers coolly. “And you guys better take your candy asses back to Camp Frostbite before someone gets hurt.”
“Maybe someone ought to get hurt,” one of the staff sergeants says. He reaches under his fatigue tunic and pulls out a knife with a short double-edged blade that has the glossy shine of ceramic to it. “Don’t think you get to pull that shit with the roboleg more than once.”
I don’t see Sergeant Fallon even start to make a move, but in the blink of an eye, there’s a pistol in her hands. She holds it at low ready, not aimed at anyone in particular, but I have no doubt that she could cap all three of the SI troopers before they can cover the distance between us. The standard-issue M109 automatic pistol is woefully inadequate for defense against troops in full battle armor, but none of us down here are wearing hardshell right now, and the 4.5-millimeter high-velocity projectiles from a service pistol can do awful things to an unprotected human body at close range.
The three SI troopers freeze on the spot. I get that unwelcome wrenching feeling in the middle of my chest that always wells up when lethal violence is about to happen. I look at Sergeant Fallon’s face, and she looks like she is merely deciding where to put the first bullet.
“Whoa,” the SI master sergeant says. “Whoa. Take it easy.” He holds out his hands slowly. Sergeant Fallon tracks his movement with the muzzle of her pistol, and it never wavers even a fraction of a millimeter.
“Drop the fucking blade,” she says to the SI trooper who is still holding his ceramic knife. “I’m not going to tell you twice.”
The trooper complies and lets go of his knife. It clatters to the concrete. The SI master sergeant looks back at his man, sees the knife at his feet, and shakes his head slowly in frowning disapproval.
“Back there in the bar, that was harmless fun,” Sergeant Fallon says. “This right here is not. I could have shot that idiot the second he pulled his knife. You all want to die in this place, right now?”
“No, ma’am,” the now disarmed staff sergeant says. Some colonists pass by, giving us a berth when they see the gun in Sergeant Fallon’s hand, but are seemingly unconcerned otherwise.
“Take your men and go back to Frostbite now,” Sergeant Fallon tells her SI counterpart. “Do not come back into town while HD is running the show here, or I will shoot you on sight. We clear?”
“Yes, Master Sergeant,” the SI master sergeant says. He takes a slow step back, hands still outstretched. Then he turns on his heel and pulls the other two SI troopers with him. Sergeant Fallon keeps the muzzle of her pistol trained on them until they disappear around a bend fifty meters down the concourse. Then she exhales sharply, as if she had been holding her breath the whole time. She lowers the pistol and tucks it back into a holster on her belt. Then she straightens out the tunic to cover the butt of the gun again and picks up the dropped knife. For a long moment, neither of us says anything as we both process what just happened.
“We’re not a military anymore,” she finally says to me. “Senior NCOs assaulting, pulling weapons on each other. We’re just a bunch of armed gangs now.”
She nods at me to follow her and starts walking toward the ops center again, a bit more briskly than before. I look over my shoulder to where the SI troopers disappeared around the bend, and follow Sergeant Fallon.
“We need to get off this fucking rock,” she says. “If we don’t find a sense of purpose again pretty damn soon, we’re going to be shooting it out in the streets with each other before too long.”
CHAPTER 3
I’m still buzzing with adrenaline when Sergeant Fallon and I walk into the ops center a few minutes later. The confrontation down in the Ellipse has turned my mood a bit sour, so I throw myself back into work to get my mind off the event. I sit down in front of the comms console and check our situation overhead while I contact the Indianapolis for a status update. The holographic display comes to life and dutifully displays ship icons and hull numbers.
Up in orbit, the strangest collection of warships I have ever seen is circling frozen little New Svalbard. The fleet overhead is nominally split up into three factions at the moment. There’s the NAC contingent: the carrier Regulus and the battlecruiser Avenger. Then there’s the SRA contingent that came with them: the assault carrier Minsk, the destroyer Shen Yang, the frigates Gomati and Neustrashimyy, and three unarmed supply vessels that are worth their weight in platinum right now. Finally, there’s the sole remaining member of the nascent New Svalbard Territorial Army’s space arm, Colonel Campbell’s little orbital combat ship Indianapolis. On paper, we have force parity between the SRA and NAC units, but the Minsk and her escorts are all thirty years old at least, and I would bet heavily on the Regulus and her bodyguard cruiser in a tussle. Luckily, we’re all one big multinational refugee family now.
“Stores are topped off, but that ain’t saying much,” Colonel Campbell says over the orbital link from the Indy’s CIC. “This boat was never meant for extended deep-space operations. There are only so many ration boxes we can cram into our holds. We’re good for another month of ops, six weeks if we live lean.”