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  “**** me,” Woźniak whispers.

  “Goddamn rebs,” another mutters.

  The Locust bucks in the turbulence. Christie raises his voice over the rising murmurs.

  “I know what you’re thinking. But it’s possible the fault wasn’t the result of sabotage. Even so, Admiral Sūn is upping planetside presence. Until further notice, all rotations run six weeks surface, two weeks orbit. So I hope you packed your mittens, fems and chums. Because we’re in for a stay and it’s cold down there.”

  The mood of the troops darkens along with the cabin lighting.

  “Questions?” Christie asks.

  A soldier with dark hair and a cheekful of chewing tobacco raises a hand.

  “I got a question.”

  “It’s not the one about where babies come from, is it, Private Day?”

  The soldier grins, shifts his chaw from one cheek to the other. “Why don’t we just line these damn pitdiggers up against the wall and X the****ing lot of them, Top?”

  “Well now, that’s a wonderful plan, Private,” Christie nods. “And I suppose you’re going to operate the hermium processors when the civis are all sixed? Got an engineering degree in between combat tours and ****ing your cousins, did you?”

  “So X their kids instead,” the private insists. “That’ll teach the rebs to **** with us.”

  “The fact we have the miners’ families under lock and key is the only thing keeping the hermium outfit operational,” Christie growls. “We X them, the mine shuts down and we got no juice for Magellan. The official party line is still that there is no insurgency among the populace. So unstrap your head from your ***and leave the thinking for the Logistics Department.”

  Day’s face sours, but he shuts up. Christie raises an eyebrow, waiting for any more inquiries. In the silence, a slender woman with bobbed black hair nods at the boy.

  “Who’s the cherry, LT?”

  “This is Specialist Lindstrom.” Lieutenant Christie slaps the blond kid heavy on the shoulder. “Electronics tech on loan from theMagellan. He’ll be overseeing systems maintenance in the Kerenza colony until further notice.”

  “What happened to Albretto? Or Ingram and Couzens?”

  “They were in the barracks when Dr. Monoxide paid a visit. They’re deep six.”

  “And this kid is their replacement?” The woman glances at Lindstrom in disbelief. “What is he, twelve? He can’t even put on a ****ing ATLAS, LT.”

  “Well, thank you for volunteering to help him, Sergeant Oshiro.” The ink on Christie’s face twists with his humorless smile. “Since you’re so concerned, you’ll be the specialist’s shadow until further notice. And as you’re nice enough to point out, we’re shorthanded on techheads, so if anything happens to him, it’s your *** in my line of fire. Understood?”

  The woman blinks. Jaw tightening.

  “…Sir, yessir.”

  The Locust’s internal PA crackles.

  “Top, this is Conn. Five minutes to surface, over.”

  “All right, pounders!” Christie roars. “You heard the lady, five minutes to powder. Temperature is six below, wind at eighty klicks, so don’t forget your booties. If a single one of you choobs even thinks about X-ing out on this rotation, I will personally haul myself down into hell just to kick your sorry ***, is that understood?”

  “Sir, yessir!”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “Sir, yessir!”

  “Your lives belong to BeiTech and your ***es belong to me. A pounder does not die unless they are given permission to die, is that understood?”

  “Sir, yessir!”

  “I can’t ****ing hear you!”

  “Sir, yessir!”

  Christie points to the BeiTech logo and motto painted on the hangar doors.

  “Company! Commander! Corps!”

  “Corps! Hooah!”

  Twenty-four fists slam onto twenty-four breastplates. Lindstrom’s is only a little off the pace. Christie surveys his troops one more time before nodding.

  “Out-****ing-standing. As you were.”

  Without another word, the lieutenant turns and stalks back the way he came.

  The soldiers set about finishing their prep. Weapons check. Temperature regulators. Signal strength. Six and a half months into their occupation of the WUC’s little hermium outfit, they’re a well-oiled machine. All the parts meshing except one. Lindstrom is still struggling with his suit when he looks up to find Sergeant Oshiro standing in front of him, hands on hips.

  This close, I can see through Lindstrom’s cam that she’s not much older than he is. Japanese descent, slice of Eurobloc in there somewhere. Hard brown eyes. Pretty in a “do not **** with me” kind of way. The words THOU SHALT NOT KILL are printed on her breastplate. She’s almost a foot shorter than he is, but somehow seems to tower over him.

  “How many times you worn an ATLAS, Cherry?”

  “…Just in training, ma’am.”

  After watching him struggle a moment longer, glancing up at that ridiculous quiff, she slaps the kid’s hands away.

  “Watch. Learn.”

  She runs him through the routine. Methodical. Checking to make sure he’s paying attention. The Locust rocks hard as it hits turbulence, and Lindstrom stumbles. Oshiro barely moves. When she’s done, the sergeant raises an eyebrow at the kid.

  “Got it?”

  “I think so.”

  “You better do more than think so. Kerenza hits seventy below once the sun goes down. You flub your seal integrity and step outside into that, you’ll be frostbitten before you feel the sting.”

  The kid blinks. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Oshiro turns to another pounder. The scarred one. “Hey, Duke, you remember Stohl?”

  “****yeah.” The big man shudders theatrically. “I still have nightmares.”

  “Why?” The kid glances between them. “What happened?”

  The man called Duke grimaces. “Temp regulator in her ATLAS blew on midnight patrol. She was half-frozen by the time she got back to the OC. They took off her suit, and most of her skin came with it.”

  The kid swallows. Wordlessly, he sets about copycatting Oshiro’s routine to seal his suit as Duke winks at a few of his comrades. To his credit, Lindstrom seems a quick study; he only fumbles once getting himself sorted.

  “Good.” Oshiro nods.

  Lindstrom flashes the sergeant a lady-killer smile. “Thanks.”

  “Save it, prettyboy,” she sighs. “You can thank me legit by not getting your stupid ***X-ed out before Christie takes me off babysitting duty.”

  Lindstrom’s lady-killer smile dies—he’s not used to it failing, by the look.

  “What’s the big deal? We’re just standing guard over a bunch of colonists, right?”

  Guffaws echo around the troop bay. The PA warns the pounders they’re two minutes from surface. Engines roar hard as the Locust slows its descent. The whole ship is bucking like it’s in an earthquake. Oshiro is smiling at the kid, hard and sharp.

  “You silver spooners on the Magellan don’t get much word about what goes down on the surface, do you?”

  “We’ve been a little busy up there,” the kid snaps. “You know, fixing a breach in the vortex containment system. Trying to stop a cascading warp storm from swallowing the entire planet. Get some comms out. Maybe get the wormhole generator running one of these years, so we can jump the **** out of here. It was a little complicate
d.”

  “That so?” Oshiro tilts her head. “Well, down here, it’s real simple, Cherry. You do what I say, when I say it. You step where I step. You move when I move. Clear?”

  “I think I’ll manage.” The kid stares defiantly. “It’s not like we’re going into battle here.”

  “Oh, maybe not a knock-’em-down-shoot-’em-up.” Oshiro nods. “But you bet your *** there’s folks down there gunning for you. And these pitdiggers aren’t gonna do anything as stupid as shoot at you when we’ve got their families locked up. But theywill**** with you. Maybe it’s just the water being cold every time you hit the showers, or a fistful of sugar in your Cheetah’s gas tank. Then maybe one night you head out on patrol and the temperature regulator in your ATLAS ****s out. Or your brake lines fail. Or maybe you just go to sleep with the heater running and never wake up.”

  Oshiro steps closer, eyes narrowed. “We invaded these people’s homes, Cherry. Bombed them to ****. Killed their families. You think this isn’t a battle? This is a ****ing war.”

  Lindstrom remains mute. Oshiro searches his eyes. Her voice is razor-edged.

  “You do what I say, when I say it,” she repeats. “You step where I step. You move when I move. Clear?”

  Lieutenant Christie reappears at the hatchway, helmet on, eight telescopic lenses arranged like a cluster of glowing spider eyes in its forehead.

  “All right, pounders. Sixty seconds. Lock and drop!”

  Oshiro is still staring at Lindstrom, waiting for an answer. The kid finally nods.

  “Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

  “Get your helmet on.”

  Sullen, the kid slaps his helmet down, the arachnid optics flickering into a steady red glow. Magnetic couplings lock each soldier in place as the engine roar grows close to deafening. Metal shuddering, rivets groaning, the heavy hiss of hydraulics underscoring it all. There’s one final tremor, then a brief silence followed by a series of heavy thuds, as the Locust touches down.

  The bay doors crack wide, admitting a howl of freezing wind, a bright flare of blinding snow-white light. Temperature in the bay plummets, frost and snow filling the air. The cameras take a moment to adjust to the glare.

  By the time vision returns, the pounders have bailed out of the transport and gathered in the shadow of one broad, prehensile wing. Lindstrom is sticking close to Oshiro as ordered, staring at the scene around him. The landing zone is as makeshift as everything else in the Kerenza IV colony. BeiTech had repurposed the old high school geeball field to serve as their airfield—it was the only space large enough with a solid surface after the spaceport was destroyed in their initial invasion. If the poor saps had known they were going to be stuck living in it for half a year or more, maybe they wouldn’t have bombed the **** out of the colony quite so thoroughly.

  Someone get me a tissue.

  Sitting by the landing pad in neat piles are thirty-seven aluminum boxes. Each one is about two meters in length. Rectangular. Embossed with the BeiTech Industries logo. You can see the shift in Lindstrom’s stance as he realizes what they are.

  Coffins.

  Coffins filled with dead BeiTech officers.

  A tanker trundles in on fat rubber treads to refuel the Locust,spanner monkeys in thermal suits swarming around the ship as its flanks steam in the freezing air. Private Duke Woźniak, standing beside Lindstrom, nudges the kid with one elbow.

  “Don’t let Oshiro get you down, rook. She’s pro. Stick to her, she’ll do you right.”

  “Sure,” the kid says, still staring at those aluminum caskets.

  “You get the chance, swing by the barracks tonight, twenty-one hundred. The Duke’s got a card game running. Jacks and Knives. You got money, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right.” The big man nods. “Twenty-one hundred. Don’t tell Christie.”

  Lieutenant Christie is barking orders, telling most of his troops to report to the Operations Center. He turns to the kid, yelling over the engines and howling gale, voice distorted by his suit.

  “Lindstrom! Enviro regulator at the med center is broke ****. You and Oshiro haul*** up the hill and get it copacetic, then report back to the OC for de—”

  The explosion cuts Christie’s sentence off at the knees.

  It’s bright. Deafening. The ATLAS a-vis rigs are built to withstand combat-level stress, though, so I get to watch most of it. It begins in the fuel tanker hitched to the Locust, blossoms outward, impossibly quick, incinerating the spanner crew and ripping through the gathered soldiers, throwing them around like kids’ toys. Lindstrom is hurled a good twenty feet, landing in a crumpled heap with Oshiro on top of him, smoking debris raining all around them as the boom echoes across the stadium.

  The sergeant rolls to her feet in an instant, an MX flechette cannon slung off her back, the red beam of her laser targeting system cutting through the swirling black smoke. Shouts of alarm ring across the airfield. Sirens wail. Engines roar as the fire crews scramble. Blackened bodies are strewn across the snow. Lindstrom struggles to his feet, rifle in hand, shouting to Oshiro.

  “What the **** is going on?”

  “Stay down!”

  “Are we under attack?”

  “Stay down!”

  The woman peers through the smoke, lenses shifting. The BeiTech Locust is a hollow shell, twisted and burning. Pounders are pulling themselves to their feet, but at least a dozen charred and smoking bodies are scattered about the blast site.

  “Medic!” comes the cry. “Medic!”

  Lindstrom staggers forward through the snow, Oshiro out in front.

  “****,” she breathes.

  Lieutenant Christie is on his knees, four other soldiers huddled around him. A fifth man is on his back, the breastplate of his ATLAS torn open by a smoking chunk of Locust hull. The chest behind it is shredded, white bone showing through the carnage, blood steaming in the snow. Christie drags off the pounder’s helmet to reveal the features of Private Jarrod Day, twisted in pain, lump of chewing tobacco still lodged in his cheek.

  “****ing********,” he groans.

  “Stow it, Private. Medic is on his way.”

  “It’s…b-bad, Top.”

  “Shut your noise, Day,” Christie growls. “You’re too stupid to know when to die.”

  Day begins coughing, the chaw bubbling up out of his lips, blood and tobacco juice slicked on his chin. Looking over his shoulder toward the cluster of buildings at the airfield’s edge, the lieutenant roars.

  “WHERE’S THAT ****ING MEDIC?”

  Day is coughing harder, his face growing pale. Lindstrom and Oshiro are standing with the others now, the Locust still blazing behind them. A BeiTech trooper with a green cross on his back comes sprinting through the sleet, skidding to his knees beside the groaning soldier. Christie has hold of Day’s hand, pulling off his own helmet and looking into his man’s eyes as the medic goes to work.

  “Look at me, Day,” the lieutenant commands.

  Day is groaning, eyes closed.

  “Soldier, I said look at me!”

  The man opens his eyes a crack. Christie grasps either side of his head, leans in close. “A pounder does not die unless he is given permission to die, you hear me, Private?”

  Blood and chaw spatter Day’s lips. The medic is cursing, sticky to the elbows. Red is soaking into the snow.

  “Private Day, are you reading me?” Christie roars again. “I do not give you permission to die,
is that understood?”

  Day winces. Whispers something inaudible.

  “I can’t hear you!”

  The wounded man hiccups, eyes growing wide. And as he exhales, the light goes out of his eyes. Like someone flicked off the switch. Two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle and bone encased in a shell of plasteel and ballistics-grade nanofiber weave. Armed to the teeth. Trained to perfection.

  And just like that, he’s gone.

  Silence reigns across the windblown field. Christie looks at the soldiers around him. The ground crew and medics and spanner monkeys. All of them silent. The lieutenant pushes himself to his feet with a soft whine of servos. The winter camo on his armor is splashed with red. He glances at the dead bodies around him, at least a dozen left lying in the explosion’s wake. He spits into glittering scarlet snow.

  “Tag ’em and bag ’em.”

  Lindstrom glances at Oshiro, breathing hard.

  The woman’s face is hidden behind her helmet.

  Her voice is like iron.

  “Welcome to Kerenza, Cherry.”

  INCEPT: 08/17/75 09:17

  Steph PARK: what the **** was that???

  Bruno WAY: hello yourself.

  Steph PARK: **** you, Bruno.

  Bruno WAY: :(

  Asha GRANT: r u ok, Steph? U safe?

  Joran KARALIS: Calm down, everyone. What was what?

  Steph PARK: that ****ing explosion? didn’t u hear it??

  Joran KARALIS: We’re pulling eighteen-hour shifts at the mine, Steph. You don’t hear much when you’re five klicks under the ice shelf and twenty klicks from the action.

  Steph PARK: well some1 rigged a fuel tanker to pop. do you know how close I was?? an entire LOCUST is gone. 13 dead. Asha, they’re bringing the bodies ur way.

  Asha GRANT: aaaawesome. just what I need this week. Another autopsy.