Soldiers of Callisto (Void Dragon Hunters Book 3) Read online

  Hardy and Strong—that’s what Short & Fat’s name turned out to be, although God knows if it is his real one—left in their seaplane half an hour ago. In a peculiar sense, they’ve left us without protection. It feels like we’re under siege, holed up in this third-floor room, with the construction lights and noise continuing outside.

  “All right,” Francie says. “Emailing Patrick now.”

  She and I are lying side by side on Jeremy’s bed, each with our computer in front of us. Jeremy lies across the top of the bed, curled up around his egg the way I used to do when I felt blue or scared. “Did I ever tell you why I joined the cavalry?” he says. “Because everyone knows the cavalry never do anything dangerous.”

  “Doh,” I say. “I used to feel the same way, kind of: it sucked to be in a technical support regiment, but at least it was safe. Right.”

  “We’re still safe here,” Francie says. “Probably.” She opens her email. Elsa gave us this email program, which has an integrated encryption module. I’ve looked at the code, and I think—I hope—it really is secure. “Hi, Patrick. OK, there’ve been some developments on our end.” She presses pause and glances over at me. “I don’t know what to say. You explain.”

  “Budge over.” I gently scoot closer to her, so my face appears on the screen next to hers. Even in the midst of my shock and worry, I think how this is going to look to Patrick, me and Francie side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and I move away a fraction of an inch, so our shoulders aren’t actually brushing. Then I press record.

  “Yo, Patrick. We had a visit from the DoD today. I don’t know, specifically, what department these guys came from. But I believe they’re part of the conspiracy.” On what grounds am I saying that? Just because I didn’t like them? But I have to say it, to make him take seriously what I am going to say next. “It turns out that they set us up to fail. Sending the three of us here was just a trick to take away Elsa’s leverage, so she can’t claim that the Void Dragons would win the war for us. They threatened to split us up, so …” I glance at Tancred, who’s lying across the door of Jeremy’s room like a guard dog. “I threatened them with, um, death by dragon-fire.”

  “Go, Jay,” Francie says, nudging me. I see her smile in the screen and it’s one of the most beautful ones she’s ever given me.

  “They pretty much came out and admitted that they want to exile me to Mars or somewhere, so I can’t interfere anymore with their lovely, lovely war.”

  “I knew this was going to turn out to be a trap,” Jeremy mumbles.

  “So I don’t know what they’re going to do next,” I continue, “but I’m betting they’ll come for you. That’s why I’m saying you’ve got to hide the eggs. Get your reindeer to dig a hole or something. Or Aardie can do it. I’ll write a digging program for her and send it to you—"

  “Never mind that,” Francie interrupts. She bumps me with her shoulder, but it’s a friendly bump. “Just use shovels. And if they try to split you guys up, Patrick—” her face is serious now. “Don’t let them.” She bites her bottom lip for a second. “Look after our people, Sarge.”

  For a moment I glimpse the relationship they used to have, when Patrick was a sergeant and Francie was a corporal, and they shared responsibility for their little family of squaddies.

  “Love ya,” Francie ends quietly.

  And that is the relationship they have now.

  I edge further away from her as she presses send.

  The noise from outside washes back into the silence.

  “Guess I better email Elsa,” I say, moving back to my own computer. “I’m going to ask her if she knows anything about Hardy and Strong.”

  I prefer typing to vidmail, even though I have idiopathic arthritis in my fingers. Go figure.

  I have gotten no further than “Dear Elsa” when Jeremy rolls off the bed and goes to the verandah door.

  “Whoa,” he says. “They’re having the all-hands briefing outside.”

  “I thought it would be in the chow hall.”

  “Guess they couldn’t all fit in.”

  We crowd onto the verandah. Outside, the noise is far louder. It wasn’t construction: it was clapping and sound effects, and the base commander’s nasal, relentless voice.

  The entire population of Lofn is assembled in the PT yard in front of our building. Marines, services contractors, sailors, other random bods. They’re overflowing the yard, sitting on the rifle range beyond the construction site.

  At the end of the range, a video presentation plays on a big screen. In front of it struts the little figure of the base commander.

  The screen shows the globe of Callisto, a blue circle dotted with battle-rafts. It looks like a snapshot of some chaotic children’s game: Cops and Robbers, or Freeze Tag.

  A laser pointer wobbles over Lofn.

  “Oh my God,” Jeremy says. “What are those?”

  Lofn is not alone on the waters, as it definitely was when we got here.

  I count no fewer than six rafts in our immediate neighborhood, between a hundred and a thousand klicks away, if this thing is to scale.

  The base commander identifies each of them in turn.

  “Alfr,” she says. “Vitr.”

  These are two Earth battle-rafts, temporarily docked together. We’re moving towards them for a scheduled transfer of provisions and personnel rotation. I already knew about this.

  Moving on to the other four battle-rafts, the commander says, “And these are School Shooter…”

  Only a couple hundred klicks off.

  “Redrum …”

  Right behind it.

  “Droog …”

  Closing in from the north.

  “And Chester the Molester.”

  The Offense’s big, fancy new-model battle-raft. The one Elsa warned us about.

  It’s the furthest away of the four, but it’s hustling up fast from the south pole, eager to partake of the triple scoop we humans are putting together for the jellies.

  “Yes, those really are their names,” the commander adds. Cue booing from the crowd. Offense craft always have funny-sinister names in English. We think it’s supposed to make them seem scarier. It is superfluous: the sight of those four evil black dots closing in on us is enough to chill the the pit of my stomach.

  “It looks like we could still get away,” Jeremy says. “Doesn’t it? If we did a 180° right now and steamed southwest, we could slip between Redrum and Chester the Molester …”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But we aren’t going to do that, because Alfr and Vitr need their seaweed.” I’m paraphrasing what the commander is saying now, with fewer syllables.

  “Shit,” Jeremy says. He’s got his egg in both hands, pressing it to his mouth. If anyone looked up at this dark verandah they might see it. But that is the least of our worries now.

  Our lightly garrisoned supply raft will be joining in a battle with three heavyweight Offense battle-rafts and one impregnable super-raft, air support promised but not guaranteed, and listening between the lines, even the base commander is worried about the outcome.

  In a lull, I hear a funny clicking sound. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s Jeremy’s teeth chattering.

  Francie, in contrast, leans out over the guard rail, as if to get that bit closer to the action. Pinkie Pie, sitting on her shoulder, mirrors her intent posture. The light of the presentation casts a blue sheen on Francie’s cheeks and Pinkie’s hide.

  As if she can feel me looking at her, Francie turns her head. “Patrick so wishes he was here,” she says softly.

  I say, “Did you know his brother was killed on Callisto last year?”

  “Yeah. Jacob. Patrick and Jake were really close. I remember when he got the news.” This would have been before I met them. “He went on a bender. Got wasted, got his rifle, went outside, and emptied the mag in the direction of Saturn.”

  I can’t picture it. Patrick’s so easy-going. Sure, he can be scary when he flips out, but he’s a soldier—he’s got
to be aggressive. What Francie is describing isn’t aggression, but something else, a raw and futile gesture that seems out of character. But then again, how would I know what it feels like to lose a brother? I don’t have one. I’m an only child.

  “They gave him latrine duty for a month,” Francie says. “Boy, is he going to be pissed that he missed this!”

  “Guess we’ll just have to take lots of pictures.”

  Francie misses my irony. “Yeah! Oh my God, I’ve got to tell him.” She skips, yes, actually skips inside.

  “It’ll be censored,” I say, following her.

  “Duh, that’s why we’ve got a special encrypted email program.”

  She flops down on Jeremy’s bed and opens her computer. The next minute she lets out a startled croak.

  “What is it?” I say, alarmed.

  “I don’t believe this!”

  I peer past her at the screen.

  Our previous email to Patrick has bounced.

  Your email was not delivered for the following reason: the address [email protected] was not found.

  My blood turns to ice water. “We’re such amateurs,” I say, mentally kicking myself. Scattergood, you idiot.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We warned him that they’d be coming for him next. But of course, they knew we would warn him. They probably picked them all up at the exact same time as Hardy and Strong were talking to me here.”

  “But why?” Francie is frantically resending the email, over and over. I watch it bounce back into her inbox, over and over. “What do you figure they’ll do with them?”

  “I don’t know.” The evasion is mealy in my mouth. I don’t know, but I have a pretty good idea.

  They’ll get rid of them, of course. Eggs and all.

  We should never have agreed to being split up.

  Thank God I didn’t let them split me up from Francie and Jeremy, anyway.

  If I had, it’s a sure bet Francie and Jeremy would not survive the upcoming engagement with the Offense.

  We may not survive, regardless. But as it is, we have Tancred on our side, a half-grown Void Dragon who eats Offense ships, and that is a mercy my heart can scarcely contain. I roll off the bed, go down on the floor beside him, bury my face in his neck and rub his shoulders.

  Francie gives up on the computer and lies flat on Jeremy’s bed, cuddling Pinkie Pie as if the little dragon were a cat.

  Jeremy comes in and flops in the chair in the corner with his egg.

  We sit like that for a while, each one with his or her Void Dragon, and I’m not too far gone to be unaware of what a weird scene it is, all of us sprawled here in the dark, while outside the Marines are going apeshit with excitement. The briefing has broken up. They sing about screwing the jellies as they straggle back to their barracks.

  Eventually I rouse myself. “I’d better finish that email to Elsa.”

  By midnight I have a response from her.

  *

  “Hardy and Strong aren’t their real names, Jay. It would help if you had pictures of them. I can’t find them in the database. But I did find a fast courier travelling from Ceres to Callisto, arriving yesterday, with a redacted passenger list. That was probably your guys. By the way, they only redact names if it’s Level Zero personnel.”

  Level Zero, I know, is beyond Top Secret. It’s for top managers and appointed officials in the Directorate of Military Intelligence, the DoD’s secret squirrel agency.

  “We think our friends, or at least some of them, are in DirMInt,” Elsa adds.

  She puts a slight but unmistakable stress on our friends. I gulp. So she agrees with me. Hardy and Strong probably are part of the conspiracy.

  I’d begun second-guessing myself, figuring they wouldn’t be that blatant. Guess I was wrong. They were that blatant. They aren’t scared of being found out … by a 25-year-old former tech support cubicle rat. Well, you wouldn’t be, would you?

  “As regards Patrick and the others,” Elsa says, “I can’t reach them, either. Unfortunately, Clay is travelling back to Ceres as we speak, or he’d be on it.”

  Dr. Clay Joy is Elsa’s righthand man at ARES. We once suspected him of being part of the conspiracy. The very memory heats my cheeks with embarrassment.

  “I’ll try to find someone who can visit Rendburg Ranch and let us know what’s going on.”

  “My grandfather!” Francie says. “He lives in Padua. Hell, he used to be in military intelligence! He was a pilot for DirMInt.” She immediately starts a new email to Elsa.

  My aunt has bags under her eyes. Her graying blonde hair is down around her shoulders, and there’s a coffee stain on her lab coat. She looks old.

  When she rescued us on Ceres, it felt like she had swooped in and waved a magic wand to fix my life. But she doesn’t have a magic wand. All she has is the directorship of an independent defense research agency. Moment by moment, I’m realizing how powerful she isn’t.

  “I’m fighting for you, Jay,” she says. “I will do every goddamn thing in my power to get you kids off that moon—”

  But there’s nothing she can do, is there? She’s 110 million klicks away, and our friends have more leverage than she does. I glance out at the horizon, which will soon be blotted out by Offense seapower. We’re on our own.

  “—and I will never forgive myself for agreeing to it in the first place. I thought it was a good-faith offer from the DoD. I should have known better. Silly me, I thought there were enough people in the DoD who actually wanted to win the war!”

  I turn off the computer on her assurances that everything will be OK. I feel worse than I did before.

  “Ahem?”

  Jeremy stands in my doorway, wearing only pyjama bottoms, carrying his egg.

  “Can I come in? I’m bored.” He flips on my TV. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he murmurs, staring sightlessly at a DoD-approved cooking show.

  I recall his panic last night. He isn’t bored. He’s scared. When he was in the 44th Mechanized Horse, he was a master of the universe. Now he’s way out of his element. I’ve lived most of my life like this: carrying around a deadly secret, not knowing who I can trust. But it’s all new to Jeremy.

  I go and get us coffees from the vending machine, and sit beside him repeating Elsa’s empty assurances, telling him everything will be OK.

  4

  We work round-the-clock shifts during our approach to Alfr and Vitr. The Marines are laboring to make Lofn more battle-worthy. The base commander asks the three of us to pitch in, which we do amidst dirty looks and whispered threats.

  There’s not much anyone can do to improve the defensibility of a big floating farm. But the trenches can always be improved. We put up fences around the edges of the raft, which can later be electrified. And the construction site outside the main facility turns out to be a new Gauss gun. After it mistakes a cloud for an enemy raft and scares the shit out of everyone, I get roped in to troubleshoot its programming.

  So I’m in the windowless IT office, lost in a swamp of kludged-together automatic target recognition algorithms, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I jump. Knock over my cold vending-machine coffee.

  Francie grins palely. “Boo.”

  “Uh. Everything OK?”

  “As if. Did I startle you? You looked so … peaceful.”

  The truth is I was feeling peaceful. I like coding. I’m good at it, and when I get into a flow state, I forget everything else.

  Now it all comes rushing back. “Never mind,” I say. “This ATR program is for shit, anyway. The training database is too small to accurately model the probability that a cloud is not an Offense battle-raft. At this point I’m just putting lipstick on a pig.”

  Francie looks blank. The entire Lofn IT department is prairie-dogging.

  I stretch my spine. “What’s up?”

  She pulls me out to the stairwell. Jeremy is waiting with his computer open on his knees. “Email from Patrick,” he says.

  “Whoa! Fantastic!”
>
  Jeremy opens an email from [email protected]. “My father’s email account,” he says.

  A video starts playing. It’s Patrick, talking, in a room with rose-pink and ivory striped wallpaper. (“My mom and dad’s place in Paris.”) Jeremy has the sound muted, so I follow along with the automatic captions.

  “Hey, Delacroix, still got cavalry cooties? Hi Francie, hi Scatter. So here we are in Paris.” Patrick looks around, grinning. “Jeremy, dude. Your parents are seriously loaded, aren’t they? This place is right in the middle of the city. Paul went to a concert at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees last night. Today everyone’s gone to see the Eiffel Tower.”

  I grab Jeremy’s elbow. “Wait. What? How? When?”

  “Pause it,” Francie says.

  Jeremy pauses the video. He shrugs modestly, but I can see the old cavalryman’s smirk playing around the corners of his mouth. “I forwarded Patrick’s video of the egg-valanche to my mom and dad.”

  “You never mentioned that.”

  “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right?”

  “And it just so happens,” Francie says, “that Jeremy’s parents run a military outsourcing company.” She digs him in the side with her elbow, but I can see she’s not pissed at him. She’s overjoyed, and so am I, because Patrick and the others are not in jail or on their way to Mars. They’re safe in Paris.

  “I suggested Mom and Dad should send some contractors to Rendburg Ranch, because honestly, the security at that place looked like shit. So they did. And the contractors were still there when the DoD arrived.”

  Jeremy presses play.

  “Saved by the cavalry!” Patrick says, chuckling.

  “Damn straight, digger,” Jeremy says. “Well, sorta.” He explains to us, “The contractors we sent were mounties, like the ones on Ganymede.” The war on Ganymede is famously a war of mechas, fought from the backs of armored horses through the dry canyons and gullies of Jupiter’s closest-in moon.