He nodded at the front screens and pushed the steering yoke forward, a welcome rollercoaster dip accompanying a change in the tone of the atmospheric jets.
“There’s the landing field,” he told us.
He was right about that, and the patch of cracked and overgrown pavement just north of Gamma Junction’s last row of buildings hadn’t changed since we left. If anything, it was more run down now, more of it reclaimed by the grass and brush. No other ships took up space on the stretch of gray pavement, just a couple VTOL transports and a few hoppers, and not a soul wandered the space between them. It was well past midnight local time, and on a world like Hausos, they rolled up the streets when the sun went down.
“Hang on,” Deke told us. “I’ll have us down in a second.”
Whatever else Deke Conner was, he was certainly a hell of a pilot. Forward thrust cut, and before my stomach had the chance to fall away with the loss of momentum and the triumph of downward gravity, the belly jets kicked us in the ass. The entire ship rang like a bell at the sudden upward thrust and I thought my spine shortened a couple centimeters, but the maneuver had the advantage of reducing our thermal signature and putting us on the ground as quickly as possible. I’d barely had time to gasp in a breath before the landing gear touched down, throwing me against the safety harness with a bouncing lurch.
“You think anyone noticed us landing?” I wondered as I yanked the quick-release for my restraints, and I didn’t mean the question as snarky as it sounded.
“I’m hoping not,” he admitted, hopping up from his seat. “Place like this, they might not bother with a night guard or anyone watching the field. We have a few hours until dawn. If we can get in and out before then, this whole thing becomes a lot simpler.”
He paused to tie down his drop leg holster, fastening the buckle around his thigh he’d left undone while he’d sat in the pilot’s seat. The weapon was large and looked heavy, though I didn’t recognize it except that it was neither a Gyroc launcher nor a pulse pistol, and it certainly wasn’t one of the service pistols Vicky and I carried.
“What the hell is that big hogleg?” I asked him on the way to the belly ramp, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Gauss pistol.” He drew the gun, popped out the magazine, spun it by the trigger guard, and handed it to me butt-first. “Guess they didn’t have these in wide issue when you got out.”
The thing had looked heavy, and by God it was heavy, probably just shy of three kilos. I’d spent most of my free time on the Orion working out in the ship’s gym, mostly because I didn’t want the Force Recon guys to show up us Drop Troopers, but I couldn’t imagine trying to use this thing in combat. I reversed it and handed it back to him, shaking my head.
“You must be stronger than you look.”
He laughed and spun it again effortlessly before reloading and reholstering it.
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
Chill air rushed in through the open belly ramp and I cursed, taking a second to zip up my jacket. The damned weather again. Middle of summer and hot as hell in Amity, late fall and close to freezing here in Gamma Junction. No snow yet, but the sky was socked in with clouds, not a star visible through the haze.
“Wish we could rent a car,” Deke murmured, sticking his hands in his pockets. “But I suppose it’s the old shoe-leather express for us.”
He set off, and I looked between him and the belly ramp for a moment.
“Don’t you want to button up?” I asked, but before the words were all the way out of my mouth, servomotors whirred and clanked and the ramp lifted upward on its own.
What the hell? The thought was for my own benefit rather than a direct question to Jim, but the AI answered it anyway.
You’re not the only one with a headcomp and an implant neurolink. Major Conner is more than he seems.
I didn’t need Jim to tell me that. Just what the hell was Omega Group?
I considered just coming out and asking him about it again, but he’d already pulled twenty meters ahead of us walking at what seemed like a normal pace, and I refused to run to catch up to him.
“He’s gonna lose us,” Vicky said, a little out of breath beside me from fast-walking.
“I think he’s trying to,” I agreed. “We’ll see how well he can find his way around town without our help.”
Particularly at night. Gamma Junction wasn’t one of those planned settlements I’d seen where every street was laid out like a grid map, every neighborhood meticulously organized and each district strictly separated. It had been built by a bunch of stubborn vets tired of living every day according to military regs, who wanted their businesses or houses wherever they pleased. There were street lights, of course, because this wasn’t some Vergai village, but there was also a fog rolling in.
Deke had been right about one thing—it would have been nice to have a car. And as if whatever implant neurolink Deke had was able to call him a cab in this place where no such service existed, a car appeared. Headlights first, bobbing up and down on the rutted road as it approached from the town, and finally the gentle rumble of an internal combustion, alcohol-fueled engine, not as efficient as an electric vehicle but a hell of a lot easier to fabricate with local materials. The engine stuttered and coughed as the vehicle came to a halt, pulling up right in Deke’s path, the only thing so far that could make him slow his pace.
Deke’s hand went to his sidearm but he didn’t draw it, waiting as a long figure exited the vehicle, huddled inside a heavy jacket, the hood pulled up.
“Are you Scorpion?” Deke asked.
“Yeah, that’s me,” a female voice answered. A very familiar female voice. “You work for Kara?”
“I work with Colonel McIntire,” Deke said a bit peevishly.
Ignoring the whining, I walked past him, frowning as I tried to place that voice. The intelligence source, Kara McIntire’s old friend, Scorpion, pulled back her hood and revealed a familiar face to go along with that familiar voice.
“Hi there, Cam, Vicky,” Grace Kim said, grinning broadly. “I didn’t expect to ever see you two back here again.”
“That,” I told her, “makes two of us.”
[ 12 ]
“What the hell, Grace?” Vicky asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “You told us you were Force Recon.”
I almost laughed. Vicky sounded more offended at the idea that our old neighbor from Hausos might have lied about being a Marine than she was shocked that the woman had been DSI.
The Kim house, I noted from my perch at the kitchen table, hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d seen it, and neither had Grace or Harold Kim. She’d never looked old and didn’t now, her face free of the lines of stress or worry I was sure she’d earned through the years. Harold seemed to have collected all those for himself. The man had the same anti-aging treatments as nearly everyone who’d served in the military or who’d been born on Earth or one of the central colonies, but the lines beside his eyes and around his mouth were deep chasms that drew his expression into a perpetual frown.
That frown was even deeper than usual now, maybe because his wife had reopened an unwelcome door into her past, or maybe because it was close to two in the morning and Grace had invited three people over for tea. It was good tea, though I was more of a coffee-drinker and I took a sip, watching the discomfort in Grace’s eyes at the accusation. And the discomfort in Deke’s eyes, which I thought was both from the fact that I was sitting with my back against the wall, forcing him into a spot where the kitchen door was behind him, and from the idea that Vicky and I had monopolized the conversation with Grace so far.
“I was Force Recon,” Grace insisted, hiding behind her teacup defensively. “Up until Demeter. The first time. I was badly wounded, evacuated by some special operations types.”
“My type of special operations types,” Deke interjected, “in point of fact.”