Angles of Attack (48 page)

The chow hall is moderately busy. There are a few dozen brigade troopers sitting at tables and eating breakfast. General Lazarus deposits us at a table in the corner of the room, where two familiar faces are talking over barley porridge and coffee.

“The lovebirds slept in this morning, I see.” Sergeant Fallon takes a sip of her coffee and nods at the bench across the table from her. Halley and I sit down with our own meal trays.

“You met the general,” Jackson states matter-of-factly.

“We did,” I say. “And we just had the strangest conversation I’ve had since I left the PRC and put on a uniform.”

“I’ve had stranger,” Sergeant Fallon says.

“Did we win?” Halley asks. “I mean, I know we kicked the shit out of our Lankies down here last night, but there were a bunch more pods coming down.”

“Can’t tell from the PRCs without a brigade unit in them,” Jackson says. “But the ones we control, they won theirs. Took some fierce fighting, though.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I say. “How many did we lose last night?”

“Three,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Sanborn, Cameron, Bardo. Eight more wounded.”

“Hell of a bill,” I say. “But they did all right. Considering they had shit for training against Lankies.”

“Ah, hell. It’s all infantry combat. Shoot the bad guys until they drop. It’s just bigger bad guys, that’s all. Even the local guys and girls did okay, for a bunch of barely trained civvies and a handful of out-of-shape vets. Imagine what they could do with some training and better weapons than those antiques they have to use. They sure as hell aren’t short on motivation here on their home turf.”

I look at her, and she returns my gaze passively and with a little bit of amusement in her eyes. Something about Sergeant Fallon’s demeanor tells me precisely which decision she made when the general presented her with the same offer he made us.

“You’re staying,” I say. “You are staying with the brigade. You’re not going back to Homeworld Defense.”

“Ah, hell,” she says. “Homeworld Defense practically kicked me out even before they dumped us on that ice moon.” She takes another sip of her coffee and puts the plastic mug down again gently. “Besides, I think I have some shit to atone for anyway. Might as well do it here, where I know my way around.”

“So what rank are you going to hold in the brigades?” I ask. “You have got to be their first Medal of Honor winner. I figure Lazarus offered you at least colonel’s eagles.”

“Fuck, no,” she says. “Do I look like a goddamn officer to you? I’m staying master sergeant.”

“Good.” I grin. “Because I really can’t picture you as anything else in my head.”

“What about you two? I thought for sure you’d be on a boat back up to the carrier already. Especially you, Lieutenant,” she says to Halley. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Halley says neutrally.

“We haven’t decided yet,” I say. “No real rush. If the world ends tomorrow, it won’t matter. And if it doesn’t end tomorrow, it won’t matter, either.”

“Then stop the chatter and eat your porridge,” Corporal-now-Major Jackson says. “Shit tastes awful when it’s cold.”

She winks at Halley and me and gets up from the table.

“Don’t be late for your first day of orientation, Master Sergeant,” she says to Sergeant Fallon. Then she walks off, crossing the dining facility with that peculiar bouncy little swagger she’s always had.

“Outranked by one of my former squad nuggets,” Sergeant Fallon grumbles around her coffee mug, but there’s the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Well, Major Unwerth always warned me that would happen to my insubordinate ass one of these days.”

The air up here is fresh and clean, or as fresh and clean as it ever gets in a PRC. The drop-ship landing pad on the rooftop of the residence tower looks like it hasn’t seen any landings in years. We sit on the edge of the pad and look east across the river. The sun is climbing up into a gray sky, the ever-present pollution denying us the blue skies we should be seeing with the sparse cloud cover overhead. But the city has a rough and brutal sort of beauty to it—rows and rows of fifth-gen residence blocks, hundreds of towers lining both sides of the river and dozens of square miles beyond. It may be a rough patch of earth on the ground between all those blocks, but up here, it’s almost serene. There’s a vitality to all these warrens of streets and alleys, teeming with people every hour of every day.

“I think it’s nuts,” Halley says. “But so are all the other picks on the table. You said it—the fleet tucked tail and ran. We’re on our own now. What’s one drop ship going to do up there?”

“I can’t believe you’re even considering staying with the brigade,” I say. “You of all people.”

“I don’t hate the idea altogether.” Halley shrugs. “It would be interesting to get a pilot school off the ground in this place. Can’t say I wouldn’t like the challenge. What about you? What are you going to do if we go back up there to rejoin what’s left of the fleet?”

“Report to
Regulus
or
Midway
.” I shrug. “Put on another bug suit. Do combat drops. Probably die horribly and senselessly on some unimportant rock out there.”

“You make it sound so appealing,” she says with a laugh.

“They’ll retrieve
Indy
’s stealth buoys and try to figure out where the fleet went with all the good shit. I wouldn’t mind being a part of the ass-kicking that’s going to follow when the joint task force shows up wherever they went and reclaims whatever they ferried out of the system.”

Thinking about
Indianapolis
and Colonel Campbell is like a small, sharp knife in my chest. I wonder how many of the crew went into the escape pods before
Indy
made that last desperate attack run, and I’d love to be able to find out. But with
Indy
gone, most of my friends are dead, and those who are left are almost all down here on Earth. Fighting the Lankies on Earth, as terrifying as it is, feels right. It feels like I’d be doing what should have been my job all along. But what’s left of the fleet will need every hand on deck if we want to keep the Lankies away from Earth in the future.

“I don’t want to decide this right now,” I say. “I don’t want to leave again and go wherever some pencil pusher with stars on his shoulder boards tells me to go. But I don’t want to just piss on my oath of service.”

“ ‘I solemnly swear and affirm to loyally serve the North American Commonwealth, and to bravely defend its laws and the freedom of its citizens,’ ”
Halley recites. “Doesn’t say where and how. Just says to bravely defend. You can do that down here just the same. Maybe better. Fewer pencil pushers.”

I look at the pale and diffused sunlight glistening on the river. Down below, on the waterfront, the ever-resilient seagulls are circling in the breeze and diving for scraps, white specks in the distance.

“You got the letter,” I say. “The one you punched me for.”

“I did,” she says. “Came in the interstation mail.”

“I wonder if my mom got hers. I sent it with the same guy, on the same day.”

“They were still doing mail runs from and to Luna until the relay went on the fritz,” Halley says. “That was only two days before you got there. I’m pretty sure she got it.”

She puts her hand in mine—her right hand, my right hand, not the one that’s half-gone and wrapped in trauma gel.
I wonder how many doctors Lazarus has recruited
, I think.

“What did you tell her?” Halley asks.

“I told her I love her,” I say. “Told her thank you for bringing me up and getting me away from that shit-sack of a father.”

I look east, where I know the Green Mountains are somewhere in the distance past the horizon, beyond New York and Lake Champlain.

“I told her to get out of Boston and to the place where we last had coffee,” I say. “And that I’d come see her there if I made it back.”

“Well,” Halley says. She holds her ring up next to mine and clinks them together lightly. “Then let’s not decide right this second. The fleet has no idea where we are. If we decide to stay here with the brigade, the fleet’s never going to know. And if we decide to go back, a few weeks aren’t going to make a difference. Not to them, anyway. I want to spend some time with my new husband without having to check schedules or look at a damn chrono. I want to live life for just a little while. Let the world go to shit after. We’ll deal with it then.”

“I bet we could ask General Lazarus for a week or two of thinking time and a ride out to the Green Mountains or Boston,” I say. “He needs us more than we do him. He can throw in some incentives.”

I take her hand into mine. She’s tall, only three inches shorter than I am, and her hands have long and nimble fingers that mesh perfectly with mine. The air carries the scent of water from the Great Lakes. I don’t know how much time we have bought ourselves with what we did yesterday—with Colonel Campbell’s sacrifice—but I know that I can choose how I get to spend that time, and I know what the colonel would say about that.

“I owe you a honeymoon anyway,” I say. “Let’s go talk to the general.”

Her content smile is all the affirmation I need.

The number of people who have had a direct or indirect hand in making the book in your hands (or on your Kindle in front of you) is big enough that it causes me sweaty-handed anxiety at the prospect of forgetting to mention someone.

First and foremost, a big thank-you to the fabulous crew at 47North, who have worked with awesome efficiency (nay,
efficient awesomeness
) to get this thing on wheels and down the road: Britt, Ben, and Justin, my editor Jason Kirk, and everyone who’s toiling behind the scenes to make things run smoothly in Seattle. I’d also like to thank David Pomerico, who isn’t at 47North anymore, but who is the guy who got the Frontlines series a home there and shepherded me through three novels.

Thanks to Andrea Hurst, my developmental editor, who once again made sure that the novel has as little suck and as much awesome as possible.

Thanks again to Marc Berte, my scientific sounding board, who makes sure that my science is not completely and ludicrously impossible.

As always, thanks to my Viable Paradise posse of regular rogues and ruffians: Claire Humphrey, Katrina Archer, Julie Day, Chang Terhune, Jeff Macfee, Curtis Chen, Steve Kopka, and Tiffani Angus. Your company and camaraderie over the years has kept the fire under my butt lit, and our little network is handily the best thing about this new career other than the royalty checks.

Thank you to John Scalzi, who is always generous with his time and advice, and Elizabeth Bear and Steven Gould. You guys are the Jedi Masters to our little VP Padawan posse.

Thanks to my agent, Evan Gregory, who keeps looking out for my interests in the dog-eat-dog world that is publishing, and who makes sure I don’t just sign any old thing people put in front of me.

Thanks to the Camp Daydrinker gang, Team Pantybear: Claire, Julie, Erica Hildebrand, Al Bogdan, Mike DeLuca, and Katie Crumpton. I didn’t get the novel finished on our retreat, but I got to recharge the Writing Energy Meter to where I could, and making new friends and traditions is always awesome.

And last but not least—a big thank-you to my readers. You keep buying these books and spreading the word to others, and I keep writing them, and it’s a racket that seems to work out really well for everyone involved. I appreciate every e-mail, review, and kind word in person, and I feel incredibly fortunate and grateful to be able to do what I am doing for a living.