No Man's Land Page 4

  She stood up to give him a quick kiss. He pulled her close, and they stood there a little longer than she’d intended. She broke it off first—public displays of affection always embarrassed her.

  He took off his gloves and rubbed his hands together as they both sat down. “Ah, nice and warm in here.” He motioned to the waitress to bring him some coffee, and grinned widely at Cassie.

  She tried to grin back, but she didn’t feel as cheerful as he did. Lots of rumors had been flying through the troops about major problems at checkpoints. Her soldiers were jumpy, which didn’t bode well for their assignment.

  She said, “I see you’re in a good mood. Peace talks went well?”

  “Not bad. We made a little progress.” Bobby served as aide de camp—chief assistant—to Gudrid Amudsen, chief peacemaker for the United System Governments’ diplomatic corps.

  “Really? How unusual. Did the True Harkers actually agree to something?” She hadn’t intended sarcasm, but it came out anyway.

  Bobby’s grin faded. “I wish you’d have more faith in the negotiation process. Nothing’s going to happen overnight—these people have been fighting for thirty years.”

  “And after six months of talks all we’ve got is a cease-fire best defined by its breaches. I heard the Harkers moved into Jehovah City again.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, we got a report on that.”

  “And the government negotiators didn’t walk out? I would have.”

  “Obviously they’ve got more faith in the negotiations than you do.”

  “Or maybe they’re just scared. They ought to be scared. The True Harkers are winning this war. And we’re just sitting here on our hands, pretending both sides are the good guys.”

  Bobby said, in a disgusted tone, “So we should just intervene on the side of the government?”

  “You already know I think so,” Cassie said. They could practically have this fight by the numbers now. “Half the USG nations are scared they’ll actually have to do something. And the others are more interested in continuing the war so they can sell weapons to both sides.”

  Bobby sighed, and reached over for her hand. “Cassie, nothing’s ever going to be completely smooth when so many different governments are involved. I know USG has screwed up before. They’ll screw up again. Humans aren’t even close to perfect. We’re still learning how to get to the root of conflicts, and we’re going to make mistakes. Especially in religious wars. But Titan isn’t Ceres.”

  Cassie yanked her hand back angrily. She hated feeling patronized. “I goddamned well know Titan isn’t Ceres. But that’s no excuse for screwing up here like they screwed up there.”

  Bobby stared down at the menu. He took a deep breath, and said, “Cassie, could we not have this fight tonight? We don’t have much time to spend with each other.”

  Maybe if she hadn’t felt so nervous about the checkpoint assignment, she’d have been able to let it go. “If you weren’t so damned enamored of all the nice-sounding peacemaking theory, you’d agree with me. The True Harkers want to run Titan. They’re not going to negotiate in good faith as long as they think they can win.”

  “Then why in hell are they at the negotiating table?”

  “So they can hang out here in Revelations near the shuttle point, and buy weapons from some of those so-called diplomats.”

  He closed the menu with a slap. “Now you’re being paranoid. Do you believe every rumor some scared private starts?”

  “I heard it from an air captain who was trying to enforce the embargo. He told me all the ways light craft could get around his blockade.”

  “And you bought into his paranoia. Look, Amudsen says the weapons embargo is holding tight. A little stuff is getting through, sure. It always does. But nothing significant, nothing for you to worry about.”

  “And if the great Amudsen says so, it must be true.”

  Bobby stood up. He ran his chit through the table register to pay for the coffee. “I’d better get back. Long day tomorrow.”

  They’d planned to spend the evening—and the night—together, knowing it would be several Earth weeks before they saw each other again. Bobby stood there, shifting his feet awkwardly. Cassie didn’t want him to leave, and she knew he didn’t really want to go. All she had to do was say something conciliatory. It wouldn’t even have to be a full apology. But she couldn’t.

  She said, “Yeah, it’s hard work, dithering around.”

  “Fight’s over, Cassie. Both sides lost.” He turned on his heel and walked out.

  Four days later she was still replaying it all in her mind. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe the talks would work. She didn’t have Bobby’s education—the war on Ceres had prevented that. All she had were instincts honed by combat experience.

  She didn’t know anything about religion, and just knew the barest facts of Titanian history—settlement by the followers of a so-called messiah named Jesse Harker, followed all too shortly by a long period of abandonment as Earth and the closer settlements struggled with other conflicts. And now a war brought on by religious schism. It made no sense to her, but she’d been raised by people who considered religion outdated mythology. Maybe Bobby was right; maybe she was just jaundiced by her own experiences.

  And even if she were right, what difference did it make? She and Bobby didn’t make policy. If she had just shut up, they could have spent a pleasant night together.

  Comm clicked in. “They’re about 25 klicks, ma’am.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  She stepped into the scan cabin, grabbed a little more coffee, and drank it down. “You’re sure there’s nothing else moving out there?”

  Gavin looked offended. “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure,” he said stiffly.

  Cassie put a hand on his shoulder to let him know she wasn’t questioning his competence. She knew her people, knew which ones she could count on, which ones had to be watched. Making sure the headpiece of her skel was set firmly in place, its sensors locking on, she walked over to the point. “What’ve we got, Sergeant?”

  “They’re showing up on short range now, ma’am.” All the skels had short-range scan built in, along with weaponry and comm.

  Cassie pulled her own scan up. “Looks like a mag-lev transport.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Scan shows about ten passengers, plus a couple up front. Think they might be refugees?”

  “I doubt it. We probably got another round of True Harkers. Refugees don’t travel by mag-lev. They walk.”

  He nodded.

  She double checked his assignments. Everything in order, as she’d expected. She buzzed Gavin. “Everybody else up?”

  “They’re moving, ma’am. Whining and bitching, but moving.”

  “Tell ’em to move faster. And spread out into the forest. Back up formation. I don’t want our whole force on the point.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The feeling of wrongness got stronger. Nothing you can do about it, she reminded herself, and shook it off. The transport was pulling up to the point.

  It stopped at the barricade. A large truck, steering compartment in front, a back area suitable for hauling either troopers or supplies.

  A couple of her soldiers stood in front of it with the sergeant; several others had moved behind it.

  A man wearing a skel in the dark blue of the rebels stepped out. Her sergeant said, “I want all your people out of there.”

  The rebel looked back inside the transport, apparently got confirmation from someone in there, and muttered an order into his comm. As the soldiers came climbing out the back, another man alit from the front compartment.

  Officer, thought Cassie, watching him move. He looked at the various soldiers, clearly sizing up who was who, and walked over to her.

  He had his headpiece up, just as she did. She wished she could see his face.

  The insignia on his skel showed him to be a captain. He said, “Lieutenant, I’ve got orders to relieve the security detail in Revelations.”

&nbs
p; “I haven’t been told anything about a replacement detail, Captain.” Clearance from Combined Forces headquarters was required to allow replacements past checkpoints.

  “We just got word ourselves a few hours ago. Maybe your people are slow letting you know. If you check, you’ll find we’ve been cleared.”

  A plausible story. They were the right size troop for security. And communications did screw up from time to time. But she didn’t like it.

  “Nice bluff, Captain, but I don’t buy it. You turn that transport around, load up, and go on back to your base. Our orders say no one crosses this zone.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “You have five minutes, Captain. I suggest you start now.”

  “What happens in five minutes?” He sounded amused.

  “We take the transport. You walk home.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant. It won’t take you those five minutes to check with your headquarters about our orders. You’re neutrals, after all. Why make this nasty?”

  Cassie hesitated. Maybe she was judging too quickly. Maybe that voice screaming ‘don’t trust this man’ in her head was just her own paranoia, her dislike of the rebel position.

  The captain moved closer to her.

  She took a step back.

  “Just check, Lieutenant.”

  It sounded like an order.

  And then Gavin was screaming in her ear. “Incoming. Almost on top of us. About ten small craft. They got smart missiles, Lieutenant.”

  Shielded. They must have been shielded from scan. Neither side on Titan was supposed to have that capacity.

  The whole troop had heard Gavin. Her people were moving and targeting weapons. As she dove for cover she hit her long range comm button, calling for immediate air support. Not that it would do any good. Their fighters would take fifteen minutes to get there.

  The rebel captain had moved behind the transport and was giving his own orders. Obviously he’d known when his other people showed on scan. One of the rebels fired, and she saw her sergeant go down. The fuckers had ammunition that pierced PK skels, more weapons they weren’t supposed to have. Cassie fired a projectile at the shooter, and saw him fall. At least their weaponry pierced the rebel skels, too.

  “Set your skels as moving targets,” she said into comm. That setting made it harder for enemy weapons to lock on. It was new tech, not fully reliable, but it beat nothing at all.

  A whistle in the air. Missiles. The barracks and scan cabin went up. Gavin. Another loss. But at least the other shift hadn’t still been in bed.

  A midair explosion. Some of their automatic intercepts were still working. But late, way too late. The scan block had slowed them down.

  She’d been moving as she watched what was going on, and now she had the rebel captain in her scan. She looked at him to lock target, but before she could fire she felt something graze her head. Her mind registered that whatever it was had pierced her skel. And then she passed out.

  Cassie struggled to open her eyes. The ground was moving under her; no, she was riding in the back of a transport. She shivered; she wasn’t wearing a skel.

  Her head hurt like hell. She tried to bring a hand up to feel it, and realized that her hands were tied behind her. Some kind of steel cord. Shit.

  Damn, her head hurt. Someone had shot her, she remembered. She wondered if she’d just moved at the lucky last moment, the point beyond which a smart weapon could no longer correct, or if whoever fired had only intended to wound her. That she was still alive argued for the latter. Hostage, maybe? Didn’t make a lot of sense. But the way her head hurt, nothing made a lot of sense.

  Cassie shivered again. Minimal heat on in the transport. Definitely Titanians in the front.

  A knife would cut the cord, she thought. She had one, concealed in her uniform belt. Had they found it? She managed to sit up. Her head throbbed with the effort. Wriggling around, she managed to move her hands to her side, and slid her thumb inside the webbed belt. It touched plastic. She shifted enough to get a finger in, too, and managed to grab the knife. Idiots. They’d figured she was disarmed without the skel and weapons belt.

  She was supposed to be. PK forces weren’t supposed to carry extra weapons, but all ex-combat troopers did. Her people did, for sure.

  Her people. Had any of them survived? The fight came back to her, far too vividly for her headache. If she’d only called in backup earlier. Though she’d had no reason, nothing but a bad feeling. Can’t call in air strikes on bad feelings. Except she knew damn well you should pay attention when something felt wrong. Maybe later you’d figure out how you knew.

  Cassie saw Sarge fall again, saw the buildings go up. Let some of them have made it. Please.

  She felt the knife in her hand, pressed the button to extend the blade, and tried it on the cord. It cut easily. At least the rebels hadn’t gotten hold of the latest tech in everything; the restraints the PK Corps used were proof against all available cutting tools.

  She flexed her fingers, felt her head. Sticky. She didn’t seem to still be bleeding, though.

  She tried to look around. Titanians were tweaked for low-light vision, too, so they hadn’t bothered to put lights in the back of the transport. The fading glow coming through the back window allowed her to pick out a pile of skels lying in the corner—green camo. PK skels then. It looked like less than twenty. Maybe some folks made it. Other stuff piled up seemed to be weapons belts and other supplies.

  Cassie wondered how many were in the front. Probably just one—why use more than one guy for transporting an injured prisoner and stolen gear?

  Cassie crawled to her feet. Standing up made her head hurt worse. Her balance felt off—no skel to compensate for light gravity. She moved over to the door to the front, pressed the open plate gently. Locked. She might have expected that. The back one was probably locked, too. Not that she felt much like rolling out of a moving vehicle. What she really wanted to do was curl up and go back to sleep. Except she was too cold.

  A skel. That’s what she needed. She crawled over to the pile, and started pawing through them, looking for hers. A sound behind her made her turn. The inside door was opening. Shit. Whoever was piloting had probably heard her trying the door. Or had been watching her on comm.

  A man ducked through the door. A large man, with hair even blonder than her bleach job. He wore rebel blue, but no skel. In one hand he held a gun. “You’re mine,” he said.

  Cassie climbed shakily to her feet. Standing up made her see double. She stumbled, backed against the pile of skels for support. He walked straight toward her, holding the gun casually, not even threatening her with it. He’d probably already locked it onto her as a target. If her eyes could be trusted, he held an energy weapon, not a projectile—it would stop her if it hit any part of her. But it still had to be pointed in her general direction. If he kept walking in like that, she’d be able to move straight into him and get out of range of the gun.

  So what the fuck was he trying to do, walking straight in on another soldier? No one attacked like that. Unless he thought she was so injured she couldn’t do much.

  An image from the past, from Ceres twenty years ago: A half-drunk asteroid pirate, walking toward her that same way, holding his weapon the same way, the same half smile on his face. He’d been celebrating the initial invasion’s success. She hadn’t been a soldier then; she’d been twelve, terrified, not sure what he wanted. Though that had become obvious when he had gotten close enough to rip her shirt open.

  Cassie’d had a knife then, too: a blade from a set of carving tools in her father’s hobby workshop. A small, but very sharp blade, made of metal refined from the high-grade ore mined in the asteroids. The closest thing to a weapon she’d been able to find as she fled the house. She knew how to carve with it; she didn’t know how to fight with it. She’d struggled with the pirate as he pushed her to the ground, pulled her pants down with one hand while holding both of her wrists with his other.

  She could think of nothing
to do but cut at his fingers with the tiny knife, and she did. He pulled his hand back with a scream of pain and then lunged for her throat with both hands. She’d stabbed upward with the blade, eyes shut, hoping something would happen. He’d screamed, pulled his hands back toward his left eye. It had given her time to run, and she had.

  Now she looked at this True Harker, this Titanian rebel, and tried to call up the look of pure terror she must have given the pirate. Though all she felt for this stupid rebel was contempt. She wobbled a bit as the transport turned, and realized she could see three of him. Probably she didn’t need to try to look vulnerable.

  Come closer, she thought, almost begged, and he did, finally grabbing the front of her shirt to pull her toward him. She came with the pull. Now her body touched his, making his gun useless for the moment. He stumbled back, but didn’t completely lose his balance. She stumbled with him, fumbling with the knife in her right hand, trying to find flesh to cut. The blade touched something and he screamed, tried to push her away.

  But she grabbed hold of the shoulder of his gun arm, and pulled him with her as she fell heavily with his push. They bounced twice, then landed with one of his arms and the gun trapped under her body. Both of her hands stayed free. Now her knife found flesh again. He screamed, and grabbed her right wrist, trying to wrest the blade away. With her left hand she stuck her fingers in his eyes. He tried to bring his free hand up to protect his face while still holding onto her wrist. She cut at his wrist as his arm moved and pushed her fingers further into his eyes. His grip loosened. She pulled her knife hand loose and plunged the blade into his carotid artery. Blood spurted. Cassie rolled aside so that most of it missed her.

  She pulled out the knife blade, shook it clean, closed it, and pushed herself up to a sitting position. And sat there, watching him die. A voice in her head said, ‘You didn’t have to kill him, Cassie.’ It sounded like Bobby. She knew it—he—was right. She wasn’t a twelve-year-old kid with no training. She had choices.