“Must really be the end of the world if we’re taking warm showers with these people after beating the shit out of each other for fifty years,” Sergeant Fallon says. Down below us, the tarmac is crawling with activity as ground crews unload cargo holds and refuel spacecraft.
The reports we got from the crews of the newly arrived NAC ships have pretty much announced the start of the apocalypse. The Lankies showed up in orbit around Mars, our main fleet yard in the solar system aside from Earth. The Battle of Mars ended in a total defeat. The fleet yards are gone, and so is the entire colony—twenty-five million people. What’s left of the fleet is scattered all over the solar system. The Lankies aren’t advancing for now, but they’ve blockaded the Alcubierre nodes, and the task force that made it through to us had sixteen ships in it before they battled their way through the node past half a dozen seed ships. There are no SRA or NAC fleets anymore, just small groups of humans on the run. At least we’ve finally stopped shooting at each other.
“What are you going to do?” I ask her. “Stay here or join the counterattack?”
“I don’t know yet,” Sergeant Fallon says. She takes a swig from the coffee mug she’s been repeatedly draining and refilling for the last few hours. “They say it’s a crapshoot whether any ship will be able to run that blockade and make it back to Earth. I’d like to have a fighting chance, not get blown out of space with no way to shoot back. Maybe I’ll stay here and wait for them to come to me.”
She puts down her mug and leans back with a tired sigh.
“What about you?” she asks without taking her eyes off the SRA drop ship settling on its skids outside.
I consider her question—not that I hadn’t made my decision pretty much the moment they put the options in front of us. We’re free to decide whether to stay part of the garrison force on New Svalbard, or join the combined NAC/SRA ragtag battle group to go back to the solar system and try to force the blockade.
“If any ship can make it through to Earth, it’s the Indy,” I say. “Colonel Campbell says we’re welcome to tag along for the run. Stealth dash back to the inner solar system.”
“You’re going back there?” Sergeant Fallon smiles. “Whatever happened to wanting to breathe the free air of the colonies? I thought Earth’s a shithole?”
“You’re staying here?” I say, aping her tone exactly. “Whatever happened to sticking with the shit you know? I thought the colonies are desolate wastelands?”
She rolls her eyes, but the smile doesn’t leave her face.
“Last time I tried to do my job right, they shipped me off into exile. They’ve been barely holding it together as it is. What do you think Earth’s like right now, with the Lankies on our doorstep?”
I try to imagine the PRCs, perpetually in unrest anyway, gripped in end-of-the-world hysteria, hundreds of millions of frightened and hungry people aware of their imminent extermination. I know that that’s about the last place in the universe I really want to be right now. But I can’t help thinking of Mom and Halley and Chief Kopka, and my former squad mates in the 365th AIB at Fort Shughart. If our species is going to end anyway, I want to make my stand with the few people I care about. I want to be in charge of my own fate, not wait for my death in a frozen hole at the ass end of the settled galaxy.
“Earth is a shithole,” I say. “But it’s our shithole. And they can’t fucking have it.”
Sergeant Fallon looks outside again and picks up her coffee. She takes a long, slurping sip.
“Come to think of it,” she says. “The apocalypse is at our door. The survival of our species is in doubt. That’s going to be one bitch of a fight. I’d hate to miss it.”
Outside, the snow flurries have stopped. As we watch the latest arrivals swoop in low over the runway and set down on the snow-swept concrete with blinking position lights, there’s a sudden break in the cloud cover, and the light from the distant sun paints the mountaintops on the horizon in shades of pale blue and white.
“Let’s go and pack for one bitch of a fight, then,” I say.
The list of people to thank gets longer and longer.
Thanks to Marc Berte, who made sure the science in the book isn’t total and utter handwavium.
Thanks to my developmental editor, Andrea Hurst, who suggested ALL THE CHANGES. She made me rewrite the stuff that sucked until it didn’t, and it’s a much better novel for that.
Thanks to my local Upper Valley writer posse: Laura Bergstresser, Patricia Bray, and John Murphy. I know none of you ever got to critique this novel, but our regular chips-and-beer shop talks have done a great deal to keep me going when I considered hanging up the pen and exploring a new career as a store greeter.