“Maybe later,” she said. Then, after a moment: “Am I blind?”
“No. You’ve been given a combination of focus drugs and powerful amphetamines. Which means your eyes are fully dilated. Sorry, I didn’t think to lower the lights before you woke up.”
The voice was still filled with kindness and warmth. Bobbie wanted to see the face behind that voice, so she risked squinting through one eye. The light didn’t burn into her like it had before, but it was still uncomfortable. The owner of the nice voice turned out to be a very tall, thin man in a naval intelligence uniform. His face was narrow and tight, the skull beneath it pressing to get out. He gave her a frightening smile that didn’t extend past a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth.
“Gunnery Sergeant Roberta W. Draper, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force,” he said, his voice so at odds with his appearance that Bobbie felt like she was watching a movie dubbed from a foreign language.
After several seconds, he still hadn’t continued, so Bobbie said, “Yes, sir,” then glanced at his bars and added, “Captain.”
She could open both eyes now without pain, but a strange tingling sensation was moving up her limbs, making them feel numb and shaky at the same time. She resisted an urge to fidget.
“Sergeant Draper, my name is Captain Thorsson, and I am here to debrief you. We’ve lost your entire platoon. There’s been a two-day pitched battle between the United Nations and Martian Congressional Republic forces on Ganymede. Which, at most recent tally, has resulted in over five billion MCR dollars of infrastructure damage, and the deaths of nearly three thousand military and civilian personnel.”
He paused again, staring at her through narrowed eyes that glittered like a snake’s. Not sure what response he was looking for, Bobbie just said, “Yes, sir.”
“Sergeant Draper, why did your platoon fire on and destroy the UN military outpost at dome fourteen?”
This question was so nonsensical that Bobbie’s mind spent several seconds trying to figure out what it really meant.
“Who ordered you to commence firing, and why?”
Of course he couldn’t be asking why her people had started the fight. Didn’t he know about the monster?
“Don’t you know about the monster?”
Captain Thorsson didn’t move, but the corners of his mouth dropped into a frown, and his forehead bunched up over his nose.
“Monster,” he said, none of the warmth gone from his voice.
“Sir, some kind of monster … mutant … something attacked the UN outpost. The UN troops were running to us to escape it. We didn’t fire on them. This … this whatever it was killed them, and then it killed us,” she said, nauseated and pausing to swallow at the lemony taste in her mouth. “I mean, everyone but me.”
Thorsson frowned for a moment, then reached into one pocket and took out a small digital recorder. He turned it off, then set it on a tray next to Bobbie’s bed.
“Sergeant, I’m going to give you a second chance. Up to now, your record has been exemplary. You are a fine marine. One of our best. Would you like to start over?”
He picked up the recorder and placed a finger on the delete button while giving her a knowing look.
“You think I’m lying?” she said. The itchy feeling in her limbs resolved itself into a very real urge to reach out and snap the smug bastard’s arm off at the elbow. “We all shot at it. There will be gun camera footage from the entire platoon of this thing killing UN soldiers and then attacking us. Sir.”
Thorsson shook his hatchet-shaped head at her, narrowing his eyes until they almost disappeared.
“We have no transmissions from the platoon for the entire fight, and no uploaded data—”
“They were jamming,” Bobbie interrupted. “I lost my radio link when I got close to the monster too.”
Thorsson continued as though she had not spoken. “And all of the local hardware was lost when an orbital mirror array fell onto the dome. You were outside of the impact area, but the shock wave threw you nearly another quarter of a kilometer. It took us some time to find you.”
All of the local hardware was lost. Such a sterile way of putting it. Everyone in Bobbie’s platoon blown into shrapnel and vapor when a couple thousand tons of mirror fell out of orbit onto them. A monitor started sounding a low, chiming alert, but no one else paid it any attention, so she didn’t either.
“My suit, sir. I shot at it too. My video will still be there.”
“Yes,” Thorsson said. “We’ve examined your suit’s video log. It’s nothing but static.”
This is like a bad horror movie, she thought. The heroine who sees the monster, but no one will believe her. She imagined the second act, in which she was court-martialed in disgrace, and only got her redemption in the third act, when the monster showed up again and killed everyone who didn’t believe —