“Take heart, Mr. Grayson,” the colonel says. He turns back to his holotable and examines the plot again. “You’ll be on the bleeding edge of the shitstorm once again, but at least we’ll be doing exactly what this ship was designed to do. Unless they parked a seed ship right across the Alcubierre node on the solar system side, we’ll make it through to Earth.”
“Yes, sir,” I say. I’m not quite as convinced as he is, to put it mildly, but his confident attitude helps to take the edge off my own anxiety a little. Every time I’ve worked with Colonel Campbell, I’ve bucked dreadful odds. Either I’ll get lucky again, or I’ll die a quick death in good company.
Master Sergeant Bogdan finds us two adjoining berths in the mission-personnel module of the ship, which is occupied by the Indy’s embarked Spaceborne Infantry squad. All the grunts on this ship have been assigned to the Indy since before she last left the solar system, so they were all on the New Svalbard side of the mutiny a few weeks ago. That means I won’t have to constantly watch my back when I go to the mess hall or the head, which is a relief. There are ten berthing slots in the personnel module. All the junior enlisted SI grunts are sharing three multibunk berths, one for each of the three fire teams, and the three sergeants and the squad’s lieutenant each get their own private berths. Two of the berths are still empty, so Dmitry gets one berth and I get to claim another, continuing the record streak of private berthing spaces I’ve been able to keep going for at least a year now.
I stash my kit in the locker and the storage drawer under the bunk. I don’t have much to tuck away other than the brand-new battle armor and HEBA kit they issued me on Regulus two weeks ago. My personal gear is still at Camp Frostbite—maybe in the locker where I placed it, possibly in the trash incinerator—and I’ve not had the desire to claim it in person. Camp Frostbite is controlled by the Spaceborne Infantry troops that obeyed the Midway commander’s order to seize the civilian assets on New Svalbard, and we killed about thirty of their number when we fought back. If I show up at Frostbite to pick up my stuff, I am likely to end up in the brig.
When all my kit is secured, I stretch out on the bunk for a bit and watch the viewport on the door, which I have turned on to monitor the corridor outside for my new SRA pal.
Dmitry knocks on the hatch a few minutes later. I get up to answer the knock.
“Does advanced imperialist warship of yours have place to eat of some sort?” he asks when I open the hatch.
“Yes, it does. You may have to make do with a sandwich and some coffee if it’s not mealtime right now, though.”
“Coffee is kharasho,” Dmitry says. “Maybe sandwiches will be not shit.”
“Well, let’s go,” I say. “The mess is one deck up.”
The NCO mess is mostly empty. One of the tables is occupied by two senior sergeants with a data pad and a pile of paperwork between them. They look up when we walk in, and neither makes an effort to conceal a bit of surprise at the sight of a fleet NCO walking in with an SRA trooper. The camouflage pattern of the SRA battle dress is an irregular collection of brown, green, and black blotches that looks almost reptilian. It’s nothing like the regular digital pattern of the NAC battle dress, and the Alliance grunt sticks out on this ship like a peppercorn in a saltshaker.
We get coffees and sandwiches and claim a table in the corner of the mess. The two fleet sergeants return to their paperwork but shoot us curious glances every once in a while.
“Sandwiches are not shit,” Dmitry proclaims after his second one. They are standard between-meals fleet chow, bologna and soy cheese with a smidgen of mustard. They’re not entirely awful, but they’re far from not shit. I’ve had so many of them over the years that I only eat them when I have no other choice and my stomach is very empty. If Dmitry likes them, they must feed those SRA troopers some pretty awful garbage over in the Minsk’s NCO mess.
Overhead, the 1MC announcing system comes to life, and Colonel Campbell’s voice interrupts my contemplation of relative cross-bloc culinary standards.
“Attention all hands, this is the CO.”
Even though the 1MC speaker strands are built into the filament of the ceiling liner and invisible, I still turn my head up out of habit. Dmitry follows suit.
“We have completed replenishment and secured all stores. As soon as we have finished our final neural-net synchronization with the rest of the task force, we will get under way and leave New Svalbard for the coordinates the Alliance has transmitted to us. We are setting out for the SRA Alcubierre node in this system. From there we will transition back into our solar system and begin our scouting run. There is no doubt in my mind that this ship will fulfill her mission and return to New Svalbard with the intelligence needed by the rest of the task force. This is what this ship was built to do. This is what this crew was trained to do. I will not wish us luck. We won’t need luck, because we have skill. Those skinny planet-stealing sons of bitches are the ones who are going to need luck, and lots of it. We’re going home. All hands, prepare for departure.”
Dmitry nods and turns his attention back to his half-eaten sandwich. “Good speech,” he says around a mouthful of food. “Ochyen kharasho.”
I take my PDP out of the leg pocket of my battle dress and bring up a picture of Halley. It’s the one she sent me after she graduated Combat Flight School, when the world was still in balance and we were still slugging it out with the Chinese and Russians, unaware of the Lankies’ existence or the coming two-front war we’d be fighting for the next half decade. I zoom in on her face, that barely contained proud smile that’s teasing, gloating, and loving all at the same time. Then I freeze the screen and run the tip of my index finger along her jawline.
We’re going home. I repeat the colonel’s words in my head. I’ll see you after we run the blockade. Piece of cake.
CHAPTER 5
Front sight, press, I remind myself. Ride the reset. Two shots, change target, two shots.