On the day after we receive the deployment orders, we do something we’ve never done before in our time here in Vermont. The chief packs us some food for lunch, and we go for a hike up into the mountains that surround Liberty Falls. Neither Halley nor I feel like carrying twenty kilos of extra kit up and down the hills, so we decide to piss on the regulations and leave our alert bags locked up in Chief Kopka’s office along with our PDPs. It’s a crisp, cold day, and the otherwise well-groomed hiking trail is covered in dry brown leaves, remnants of the gorgeous fall we never got to experience because we were 150 light-years from the Green Mountains a month and a half ago when all the colors turned. We are wearing our CDU cammies and weather shells and only carry sidearms and a bag with our lunch and water. I can tell the hike strains Halley much more than it would have before she got injured, but I know that she wants to prove to herself that she is up to the challenge despite not being healed up completely yet. If she can’t hike a small hill on Earth in ideal conditions, she’ll have no chance if she gets shot down on Mars and has to make an escape through much worse terrain.
“Will you look at this view,” Halley says when we reach the top of the trail two hours later. We’re at the top of a tall ridge, and Liberty Falls is nestled in the valley below, a few kilometers away.
“Bet you it was something else back in October,” I say. The deciduous trees here in the mountains have shed their leaves, and the hills are brown and gray. I’ve learned a lot about trees in the last year or two, coming down here regularly.
“It’s still something else. Just listen.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Precisely,” Halley says.
The town below is quiet. No noise makes it up to where we are standing, where the trees are swaying and rustling softly in the cold wind. I am once again struck by the difference between small-town ’burber life and the PRCs. The residence clusters just swallow the landscape, blanket it and take it over. Liberty Falls, manufactured and manicured as it is, just kind of nestles in the valley, molding itself to the shape of the landscape. None of the buildings in the town are taller than four or five floors. There’s a stream running through the town, and the water is glittering in the rays of the sun that’s poking through the holes in the cloud coverage. The solar-cell pavements of the residential neighborhoods have almost the same color as the river water, muted tones of dark green and blue.
I sit down on a fallen tree trunk nearby, and Halley joins me. The walk up was just strenuous enough for both of us to break a sweat despite the low temperature. We enjoy the view in silence as we catch our breath again.
“Feels weird,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve ever been out in the field without a rifle and a pack.”
“We’re not in the field,” Halley says. “We’re in nature.”
“Never heard of it. That’s what this is? Nature?”
“Smart-ass.” She looks up into the sun poking through the clouds and closes her eyes. “Remember Arcadia? All those trees. You never saw it from the air the way I did from the cockpit. Lakes. Forests. Grassland. Like a little Earth, only without all the people.”
“I remember,” I say. “And then we set off a nuke on it.”
“We didn’t. The SEALs did. Major Masoud. And we’d be dead if he hadn’t lit up that terraformer.”
“Yeah, I know. Still seems like a shit thing to do, though. Four settlements on that rock, and one of them is now irradiated.”
“They can be glad he didn’t just hit the trigger on all of them. We can build more towns. Lots of space left on that moon.”
The Arcadia mission is still gnawing on my mind. As a small-unit covert action, it was one of the most successful ones in NAC military history, mostly thanks to Major Masoud’s planning and ruthlessness. We lost thirty troops and three advanced black-ops drop ships, but we seized an entire colony moon and half a million tons of top-of-the-line fighting ships. More importantly, the success of the mission restored a sense of justice among much of the NAC population. The new government—made up largely of veterans—gained a lot of goodwill and respect for hauling the renegade former NAC president and his entire circle of conspirators back to Earth in the brig of a supercarrier. It showed the people that the old elite was still subject to our laws, and that we will go 150 light-years and fight our own to drag them back to Earth if they betray us. But most of the thirty troops who died fell in the final assault on the admin complex in Arcadia City, and that mission was my initiative. I have tried to take Sergeant Fallon’s advice about not second-guessing myself, but that sentiment is hard to reconcile with the rows of body bags that rode home with us on Portsmouth.
“What are we going to do after we get back?” Halley asks me. “Do we come back here? Live the ’burber life?”
“Well, we sure as shit aren’t going to be anywhere near your folks,” I say. “Not after last week.”
Halley makes a little grimace at the mention of her parents. Then she looks back at the valley and the tidy little town tucked away in it.
“I suppose this isn’t the worst of places to put down roots,” she says. “If we’re going to come back from Mars, that is.”
“We will,” I say.
“Oh?” Halley smiles and blinks into the sun again. “You got strategic intel you’re not sharing? We’re about to assault a colony world with thousands of Lankies on it. A dozen or more seed ships in orbit. And we’re going into battle with whatever was left in the scrapyard.”
“Well, there’s a few stars in the lineup. Thanks to Major Masoud. As much as I hate to give that little bastard praise for anything.”
“You think that’ll make a difference?”
“No,” I say. “Not the extra ships. Although they’ll be nice to have.”
I open the lunch bag Chief Kopka packed for us and go through the contents. There are sandwiches with turkey and cheddar—real stuff, not the soy shit they use in military mid-rats—and two thermal cups of soup. I pop the lid on one to check the contents. It’s potato soup, thick enough to make a spoon stand up in it.
“That smells good,” Halley says.
I hand her the container and a spoon from the bag and get another one out for myself.
“We’ll win because it’ll be all of us against all of them,” I say. “The Russians, the Chinese, the Euros, the Africans, the South Americans, and us. And nothing but Lankies on the receiving end. No bullshit skirmish over some clump of dirt somewhere past the Thirty. No traitors. No questions about who needs shooting and why.”
“Going all in,” Halley says. “There’s beauty in that.” She looks at me quizzically. “You’re looking forward to that fight, aren’t you?”