Virtues of War (25 page)

He looked for any sign of life. Aside from the steady tumble, there was no movement. No lights on the suit indicating functionality, yet it appeared intact. Jack frowned. Technically his mission didn’t include casualty retrieval. He looked at the dark suit again, and a single thought struck him:

If it was his body tumbling end over end like that, in a slowly decaying orbit over a foreign world, would he want it left behind?

Closing his faceplate and switching to suit life-support, Jack unstrapped and pushed his way back into the Hawk’s cargo area and into the tiny airlock. The routine movement sent waves of pain through his broken body. His breathing was heavy during the twenty seconds required to evacuate the air, then the airlock light switched to red. He tethered himself to the ship and opened the outer door.

As the protective door slid away, Jack’s stomach rose up to his throat. Looking out at space from the safety of a cockpit was one thing. Staring out into the abyss, into the infinite nothingness of space—that was something else. He found himself unable to move. Grabbing one of the airlock handles, he stared at the three meters separating him from the tumbling trooper.

It looked like three light years.

His ribs ached from rapid breathing.

Come on, Jack
, he told himself.
Just out, and right back in.

He pulled himself to the threshold, inching out of the safety of his ship. He switched his grip to a handle on his left, and reached back to double-check his tether. Then he leaned his booted toes over the edge. The trooper was only three meters away. All he had to do was push himself out.

Ready… one, two, three!

His limbs refused to respond.

He stared out at the trooper.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, and forced his fingers to push. With the slightest of jerks, he floated free into open space.

He fixed his eyes on the trooper. Reaching out, he managed to grab the assault rifle and pull. His suit collided gently with the black, armored surface, and he wrapped his arms frantically around it. His momentum slowed the tumbling, but started to push them both away from the Hawk.

His breath was quick and shallow, his arms like a vise around his prize. His body felt weak from the exertion, and it seemed as if everything hurt.

There was a sharp jerk at his midsection as his tether reached its full extent. He gasped as he thought he might lose his grip, but his arms held. He and the trooper were held fast to the Hawk.

He did nothing for a moment. Then, with a slow, terrifying movement, he let go of the trooper with one arm and reached back to grab his tether. A single tug, and they were floating back toward the airlock.

His armored prize fit easily through the opening, and only as he gently pushed the trooper to the inside bulkhead did he realize how small the suit was. Grey dust stuck to patches of a dark liquid that was splattered across at least half the surface area. As the door closed and the airlock was pressurized, Jack took a moment to look through the visor, dreading what he might see.

Eyes closed, cheeks pale, it was
Rapier
’s strike officer.

Jack’s breath caught in his throat.

She was breathing.

The airlock light switched to green. He opened the inner door and gently pushed her through into the Hawk. Then he opened his faceplate, and reached to open hers. Unlike standard-issue Astral spacesuits, the armored trooper suits didn’t have brightly lit displays on their chests. They wouldn’t exactly be helpful during a sneak attack.

He carefully unlocked her faceplate—it slid up easily. Decoupling a glove to free his hand, he reached in gingerly to place the back of his fingers against her cheek. Her skin was cool, but not unnaturally so. He moved his hand to hover before her nose. He felt the gentle warmth of breath against his fingers.

Suddenly her eyes fluttered open. She was dazed for a second, then her gaze locked onto his.

“Hi,” he said. “Good to see you alive.” The words came out awkwardly through his bruised lips.

She tried to scramble backward, but her movements were clumsy in the zero-g. Jack pushed away, floating backward to give her space.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe.”

She bumped into the aft bulkhead, eyes darting in all directions. With a swift motion she hauled in her free-floating assault rifle and brought it to bear.

He threw up his hands. “Whoa, whoa! I’m Astral Force! My name’s Jack Mallory! I’m a pilot!”

Her gaze took him in, and she lowered her rifle. He saw the light of recognition ignite her dark eyes. Incredibly, she
laughed
.

“Jack the pilot.” Her voice was very soft. “You look like shit, Jack.” She looked around again, visibly relaxing. “Where the hell are we?”

He lowered his hands, shaking from the shock of nearly getting shot.

“This is Viking-Two, the Hawk from
Kristiansand
. We’re in low-Laika orbit.”

She shivered, and her gaze became distant. “The battle?”

“It ended about twenty-four hours ago. I’m just part of the cleanup—I mean, recovery team.”

“What happened?”

He motioned her toward the cockpit. “Come have a look. Maybe you can tell me a thing or two.”

He pushed forward and strapped back into his seat. She appeared over his left shoulder, anchoring herself with a hand on his seat. Together they looked out at the orbital battlefield, and the Laikan dawn far below.

“The Centauri battle cruiser,” she said.

“Yeah, abandoned. Strange, because it’s still in one piece. Not like some of the other Centauri ships.”

She was silent for a long moment. He looked up at her. She looked very tired.

“What about
Rapier
?” she asked suddenly.

Jack hated to be the messenger.

“Word is she went down,” he said. “Burned up over Laika. Sorry. But both her pods were recovered, with about half the crew alive.”

“Both pods made it back?” Her expression was unreadable.

“Yeah.”

Her pale face sagged, so tiny in the armored helmet. Her dark eyes shone with moisture and she pushed back, out of Jack’s view.

He moved his gaze across the visual, his flight controls. and his hunt controls. Everything was nominal. He set the Hawk into motion again, easing to starboard to resume his search pattern. His patrol was due to last another half-hour, but he suspected he should get her back to
Kristiansand
.

He turned his seat, looking back to ask if she was feeling okay.

She was floating in the cargo area, curled up as tightly as her heavy suit would allow. Her gloves were off and her bare hands were clenched together against the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were tightly shut and her face was locked in a grimace, jerking with each silent sob.

He turned away, and activated his comms.

“Longboat, Viking-Two. I have recovered a Terran survivor from the battle, and request permission to return to Mother immediately.”

There was the slightest of pauses before the response came.

“Viking-Two, confirm… you have a
survivor
?”

“That’s affirmative.” Jack suddenly realized that he couldn’t remember her name. “One survivor.”

K
ristiansand
’s sickbay was bigger than Katja’s cabin in
Rapier
, but the curtains around her bunk made her claustrophobic.

She hadn’t minded the curtain that hid her from the door to the main passageway while the ship’s medic helped her out of her armored suit, sent her sour clothes to be laundered, and gave her an exam. But after a few hours of lying strapped on the tiny bunk, unable to sleep as her mind struggled to process the wild imagery flashing through her brain, she felt trapped.

So she unstrapped herself and pushed up off the bed.

Then she grabbed for a sick bag and heaved painfully. She steadied herself, breathing heavily. Her body throbbed with heat.

Her hand slipped in its own sweat and she reached out to steady herself again. Fleet doctrine required that any artificial gravity be switched off in wartime, but enough time in
Rapier
had made zero-g second nature to her. Her nausea eased, and she moved to collect her clothes. The routine motion helped to focus her thoughts and push away the images.

She was handling it better this time.

The rest of sickbay was empty, the lights dimmed to conserve power, and Katja exited into the main passageway. This was her first time aboard a destroyer, and here too, the lights were duller than the gleaming white she was used to in
Normandy
, although brighter than the shadows of
Rapier
. Likewise, the rectangular-shaped passageway was tighter than
Normandy
’s broad avenues, but less constricted than
Rapier
’s honeycombs.

A few
Kristiansand
crewmembers were moving carefully along the passageway, never straying more than a few centimeters from the security of the continuous railing fixed to the bulkhead. Katja pushed out easily into the corridor, then put up a hand to slow the first sailor she saw. His rank indicated that he was a trooper, or the Fleet equivalent.

“Rating,” she said, “where can I find the ship’s officers?”

He frowned, barely looking away from his careful, handover-hand movement. “How the hell would I know?”

His insolence shocked her, and he was nearly past before she recovered. She braced herself against the deckhead with one hand, and with the other grabbed the material of his coveralls at the shoulder.

“Stop right there, Rating.”

He was a fairly big man, and he pulled away as he turned. “Get your hand off me.”

She released him, but glared down from her superior height.

“Rating, I’m new on board, because my ship was destroyed. In case the blue coveralls fooled you, let me point out the strike qualification on my chest, and allow me to add that I’m not in a very good fucking mood.” She let that sink in, and continued. “I need to speak to your officers. So humor me and tell me which way I need to go to find them.”

His expression remained dark, but he pointed back the way he had come. “The wardroom is up that way, starboard side. The bridge is all the way forward… ma’am.”

“Thank you. Carry on.”

She turned and pushed herself forward with a long, graceful motion, leaving the petulant crewman behind. She’d forgotten how lax discipline was in the Fleet, and felt a sudden constriction in her chest as she remembered the cool professionalism of
Rapier
’s crew.

She suddenly realized how much she wanted to see them again: although not as much as she wanted to see her troopers. Her mind clouded with the visual image of Hernandez being shot to pieces by the Centauri APR, and the quantum-flux image of Assad and Jackson meeting the same fate. Chang had lost at least one of his troopers, and Katja prayed that the others had made it out.

What was she thinking, boarding a Centauri battle cruiser? Her last image of
Rapier
, plummeting downward in a cone of flame and smoke, held her in thrall for a moment. She shook it off, wondering if she was insane. Trying to impress a man who was already dead instead of getting her troops to safety. Acting on instinct instead of thought, her father would say.

The wardroom door was closed. Katja swung down and righted herself, looking for any sort of DO NOT ENTER sign. Seeing none, she slid open the door and floated through.

It was standing room only in the dim light of the officers’ mess. Katja barely had room to let the door shut behind her before she was bumping into the crowd. Young faces turned to look at her with surprise—she was facing the handful of subbies who always crowded in at the back of a briefing. Jack the Pilot was among them, and she nodded. He grinned back as best he could through his bruised and oddly misshapen features, and pulled himself aside to make room for her.

She slipped in among the subbies.

A tactical brief was projected in the air at the front of the room, and Katja immediately recognized the orbital battle she had just survived, the opposing lines located in the center and the Terran main body moving slowly away. A female voice that sounded vaguely familiar was narrating the action.

“…At this point
Normandy
is struggling to pull out of the gravity well, having lost three of her eight generators in the missile attack. One of the hostile frigates breaks away from the main battle line to pursue her, but this attack is thwarted by
Rapier
in a diving engagement.”

Katja watched as a single blue symbol moved swiftly across the tactical space. The display paused from time to time, manipulated by the speaker.

“The attack is successful. It forces the hostile to draw back and gives
Normandy
time to scramble FACs
Cutlass
and
Sabre
.” Admiring murmurs rippled through the collected officers. “Unfortunately,
Rapier
has taken heavy fire from the hostile, so the angle and speed of the dive are such that
Rapier
is unable to pull up. We lose tracking on her at this point.”

The brief continued, showing the continual pounding between the two battle lines and the slow escape of the Terran capital ships.

“For reasons we have yet to understand,” the speaker continued, “the hostile battle cruiser stops firing and seems to go inactive. Having lost their heavy fire support, the hostile frigates quickly lose their advantage and are beaten back by the Terran battle line. The hostiles withdraw and are not pursued. Command at this point is unsure if there are other threats elsewhere in the system, and wisely decides to keep the battle line close to the main body.”

The wardroom lights brightened amidst a flurry of low comments. A new female voice spoke, and all others silenced.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. And you were in
Normandy
during the attack?”

“No, ma’am,” the original speaker replied, “I was in
Rapier
.”

Breeze. The crowd stirred with new interest, and Katja watched in surprise as she pushed up out of her seat to face her audience.