Eleven

At the rendezvous

“Who’s in charge here,” Charles Dotsero called out.

Jean Barrett stepped forward, her mouth set in a grim line. “I’m Captain Barrett.  Where are my crew members?”

Dotsero motioned to someone behind him. An armed man led the six girls out from behind a large boulder.

“Cut them loose,” Barrett ordered.

Dotsero looked at his man and nodded. The guard produced a large knife and cut the ropes from each girl’s wrists.

“Guards,” Barrett said.  Gomp and Colonel Feller led the Shade Tree security force forward, their helmet visors down and locked. “Girls, walk straight over here.”

“Hold on just a moment,” Dotsero said.

“What?”

The slaver grinned. “Captain,” he said, “I have a hundred armed men on that ridgeline behind me, armed with heavy weapons.”

“And?”

Dotsero held up a small personal communicator. “And, Captain, I’m going to ask you all to lay down your arms. I’m afraid the girls won’t be going with you. In fact, I’m afraid you are all going to be my… guests… for a time.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Barrett said. “You’re outgunned.”

“What?”

Barrett held up a small black anodized aluminum wand with a gleaming red contact point. “Know what this is?”

“A radio remote,” Dotsero said. “What is this? Do you take me for a fool, Captain?”

“Events prove you one,” Barrett snapped. “I don’t need to bring a company of infantry to cover my exit, Colonel Dotsero” – Dotsero’s eyes shot open wide at the mention of his name – “although you may find tangling with my Security crew a bit more than you can handle. But I have better ways of doing things. In fact, you provided my safe-conduct yourself.”

Hector Gomp strolled forward to stand beside his Captain, raising his visor as he did so. “Funny stuff you carry around on your ship,” he said. “Sure like to know where you’re finding old fusion warheads.”

Dotsero’s face paled. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” Barrett almost snarled the words at him.

“How the hell do you know my name?”

“We know more than your name,” another armored figure said. Dotsero stared as the second figure, this one wearing old, battered pre-war battle armor, stepped up and raised his visor.

“Hello, Chuck,” Colonel Augustus Feller said in an amiable tone.

“Gus Feller, you old son of a bitch,” the slaver breathed.

“Now,” Barrett said, “girls, walk straight to me. McNeal, Timmons, load them in the skimmer, and take off up that canyon we just came down. Dotsero, stand right where you are.”

The six girls hurried to comply. As they passed Barrett, Tim McNeal and Yvette Langstrom led them towards the canyon mouth.

“Don’t get any ideas about trying anything, either,” Barrett warned Dotsero, who was glancing at the ridgelines bordering the canyon. “This thing is a deadman rig. I drop it or let go of the contact, the nuke goes off in thirty minutes. Don’t worry about trying to find it – you can’t. But it will sure as hell flatten Brickstown if it goes off, and in this thin atmosphere the heat flash and blast will probably get you here, too.”

Dotsero’s face paled. “Thirty minutes?”

“You heard me.”

“I’ve had a jamming field over this valley for at least fifteen. Dammit, Captain, you may have killed us all!”

Not if we can get to the shuttle on time, Barrett thought. She spun to face her crewmembers. “Everyone run! Get out of here now!”

Charles Dotsero and his bodyguard were already running for a nearby clump of boulders, Dotsero yelling as he ran, “Open fire! Open fire! Kill them!”

Colonel Feller grabbed Captain Barrett by one arm and yanked her into the lee of a large boulder as a hail of projectile weapon fire raked the valley floor. Fifty meters to the right, Barrett saw Hector Gomp dive behind another boulder.

Feller looked over his shoulder. “Skimmer’s long gone. Looks like the rest of them made it to the valley mouth. They should be out of trouble.”

“We’re not,” Barrett said. Feller turned to see the Captain glaring at her own comm. “He wasn’t lying; all our transmissions are completely jammed. I can’t even call the ship.”

Feller tapped the side of his helmet. “Gomp?” he asked. He looked at Barrett. “Sure as hell, Captain, even our encrypted helmet comms are out.”

“Great.”

“Captain,” Feller said, “you’re bleeding.”

Barrett looked down. Her right calf had been punctured by a projectile, her lower pant leg soaked with blood. She felt no pain, only a burning sensation.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said slowly.

“Can you stand up?”

Barrett tried rising to a crouch. “Now it hurts,” she said. “I don’t think I can run. Not even in this gravity.”

“We’ve got to get you out of here,” Feller belabored the obvious. “You’re losing blood fast.” He bent, tore away the Captain’s lower pant leg, knotted it into a makeshift tourniquet. “That should help, for a while.”

“As long as I don’t get shot again.”

***

A few meters away

“At least three of them are pinned down,” Dotsero’s bodyguard informed his boss.  Both men were hidden in a small depression in the stony ground.

“They’re behind those big rocks. Two to the left, one to the right,” the bodyguard agreed.

“Listen,” Dotsero said. “You get up to the ridgeline, find Andre, tell him to fan the men out along the ridge until they can see those people, and to fire on sight. I’ll keep them pinned down.”

“You say so, Boss,” the man said, and quickly wriggled away, pressed close to the dusty ground. Dotsero drew a hand weapon, raised up slightly, and snapped a shot off at Gomp’s rock.

***

At the rocks

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Hope it’s a good one,” Barrett said. She was growing dizzy. “We’re running out of time – if Dotsero was right, we’ve got maybe ten minutes.”

Feller picked up a small rock and tossed it at Gomp, who turned to look. Feller made a series of hand signals. Gomp nodded.

“Stay down, Captain,” Feller said. He placed his carbine on auto and let loose a burst at the ridgeline. Fire was returned but slowly and off the mark, almost as though…

“They’re moving around up there,” Feller said. “Flanking us.”

“Hey, Cap’n,” Gomp said as he crashed to earth after his sprint from the other boulder. He looked at Barrett’s leg. “You OK?”

“I’ll be fine once we’re all out of here,” she said. “Eight minutes, maybe less. Let’s hear that plan, Colonel.”

“All right. Figure we need five minutes to get up that little canyon, one to get loaded in the shuttle, that leaves two minutes to clear the blast radius of that nuke.”

“Plenty of time, with Guerra piloting,” Barrett said.

“Gomp, was that an ArcLight I saw in your grenade pouch?”

Gomp grinned. “Sure enough, sir.”

“Give it to me.” As Gomp extracted the canister-shaped device from his left grenade pouch and handed it over, Feller explained, “An ArcLight, Captain, is basically a massive non-lethal area suppression device. Once I toss it, it will generate a high-intensity flash that will temporarily blind everyone within about a five-hundred meter radius. Gomp and I will be protected by our visors, but…”

“But I won’t,” Barrett finished for him.

“The effect is only temporary,” Feller said, “And if you duck down behind this rock and shield your eyes, you should only be dazzled for a few moments. Those guys up there, though, they’ll all be looking down at us.”

“All right, let’s do it.”

“Visors down and polarized, Gomp.” Feller looked at the ArcLight, pressed a contact, silently counted to five as the device let out a growing, high-pitched whine.

“Fire in the hole!” He threw the grenade into the center of the small open area.

***

On the ridgeline

“What’s that?” one of the thugs raised his head, pointed down into the valley.

An older man stole a look. His eyes snapped open wide. “Down! Everybody down!”

The ArcLight went off with a blinding, searing flash of white light.

***

The valley floor

“Run!”

Feller bent and picked up Captain Barrett. “Glad the gravity’s low here,” he muttered as he trotted towards the canyon. Behind him Hector Gomp ran backwards, carbine at the ready, scanning the valley walls. A shot rang out, the projectile splatting into the dust a meter away.

“I’m not that heavy,” Barrett protested. She blinked her eyes; she could make out shapes, dark and light spots, but no more.

“You’re just a slip of a girl, Captain.” Feller’s visor shot up, and he grinned. “It’s just that I’m an old man.”

Something hit Feller from the left, sending him and Barrett sprawling into the dust.  He rolled, came up spitting red dirt, to see Charles Dotsero leaping at him again.

“Gomp! Get the Captain out of here!” Gomp ran past, scooping up the Captain and heading for the canyon – only a few meters now – even as Dotsero floated in a fast, low-gravity arc to hit Feller in the chest.

“Mother…” Feller growled, rolled, caught Dotsero with a fist to the jaw, knocked him down. Dotsero jumped back up, launching himself almost a meter in the air in the low gravity. Feller had lost his carbine – he looked around quickly, saw it in the dust two meters away.

“Don’t bother, Colonel,” Dotsero said in a cold voice. Feller turned; the slaver was on his feet, pointing a hand weapon at Feller’s open visor. “Anyone still moving, get into that canyon! Get those people before they get to the shuttle!” At least forty men were on the valley floor now, headed their way.  Feller saw two men carrying a light anti-air rocket, one easily capable of knocking down the shuttle. The ArcLight hadn’t worked as he’d hoped.

Dotsero was grinning now.  “I’ve been waiting years for this, old man. You got me busted, demoted, and cashiered. I owe you.” He raised his weapon, aimed between Feller’s eyes.

“Yeah, I suppose you think you do.” Oddly, Feller was smiling, too.  “One thing, Colonel, before you shoot.”

“Yes?”

“I taught you everything you know, boy,” Feller growled, “but I didn’t teach you everything I know.”  He held up his hand, where his Academy ring gleamed against the flat black of the polymer gloves.  The ring was smeared with a bit of blood from Dotsero’s jaw. “See this?”

“An Academy ring,” Dotsero scoffed.

“A neurotoxin injector,” Feller corrected. “You should be feeling the effects, oh, right about now.”  He grinned as Dotsero dropped his pistol, slumped to the dusty ground.  Dotsero looked up at Feller, his eyes rolling helplessly as the toxin paralyzed all of his voluntary muscles.

Colonel Feller bent down, grunting a bit with the pain of his cancerous belly, and picked up Dotsero’s gun. “You know,” he said companionably, “You never could take me, Charlie.”

With a jaunty wave and a nasty smile, Feller turned jogged for the canyon mouth ahead of a crowd of screaming thugs, leaving Charles Dotsero in a helpless pile on the ground.

Feller broke into a run as he entered the canyon mouth.  Behind him, a dozen or more Brickstown ‘soldiers’ spilled into view.

“This way,” Gomp called. “Sir, behind you!” He snapped off a shot, and two thugs hit the dirt.  Shots whined up the canyon, one pinging off Gomp’s armor.

“They’re right behind you,” Gomp shouted.  He pulled another grenade from his cargo vest, armed it, and tossed it down the canyon.  He was rewarded with an explosion and a thin screech of pain.

“That will keep their heads down for a second or two, but only until they get their weapons teams up.”

“I know. There are thirty-forty of them heading into the canyon, at least. I saw two crew-served weapons teams, they’ll be here in a minute. Where’s the Captain?”

“She went on ahead. She’s moving slow, but moving.”

“Get going.” Both men fired several shots down the canyon to keep heads down, turned and started climbing. A rocket slammed into a boulder only meters behind them and exploded, sending rock chips flying.

“Well, that didn’t take them long.”

“We ain’t gonna make it,” Gomp said. “They’re gaining on us, and we can’t even call the shuttle to leave without us.”

“Will the Captain get there in time without help?”

Gomp shook his head. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t count on it.”

“All right,” Feller growled. He stopped at a large rock outcrop that partially blocked a bend in the canyon. “Go on ahead. Get the Captain, sling her over your shoulder if you have to, but get to that shuttle and take off. I’ll hold them here.”

‘What?”

“No time to argue, son,” Feller said. “Get going.”

“Sir, let me, you’re a passenger, I can’t allow…”

“Allow? You can’t stop me.” Feller raised his visor, looked at Gomp. “Son, I’m an old man. Get going. Take care of your Captain. That’s an order, Marine.”

Gomp turned to go, but stopped at the Colonel’s voice.

“Here,” Feller called out.  “Hold up.” Gomp stopped, turned back to the Colonel.

Feller shifted his carbine to his left hand, popped open his armor’s chest piece, reached into the neck of his shirt, pulled out something on a silver chain.  A sharp tug snapped the chain.  He tossed the jangling item, and Gomp caught it; Gomp looked down to see a badly worn pair of Marine dog tags and a datachip on the broken chain.

“My last will,” Feller explained, “And I suppose, once that nuke goes off, my last remaining vestiges.  Follow the instructions on the chip, boy, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Gomp whispered.  Another shot whined past overhead.

Feller scowled and roared at Gomp in his best parade-ground bellow. “Speak up, Marine! Promise me!”

Gomp came instinctively to attention. “Yes, sir!”

“All right,” Feller growled.  “Now, get your friends and your Captain back to the shuttle and get the hell out of here.  Nobody’s getting past me in this damn canyon.  Hurry!”

Gomp hurried up the canyon, his vision blurring as he ran.  Behind him, he heard the old Colonel’s roar:

“Come on, you sons of bitches!  You want a fight, I’ll show you a fight! I’m waiting right here!”

More shots rang out, echoing up the narrow rock of the passageway as Gomp ran out of the canyon to see the shuttle only meters away.  Captain Barrett was already in the shuttle’s hatch, urging him on. Gomp ran for the hatch, threw himself in, shouting “Go go go!” The shuttle lifted off with a whine of thrusters, the hatch closing as it gained altitude.

“Where’s the Colonel?” Barrett demanded.

“Isn’t coming,” Gomp said, picking himself up off the deck.

“What do you mean he isn’t coming?”

“He isn’t coming,” Gomp repeated. “Cap’n, there were almost fifty of them pounding up that canyon after us with heavy weapons – no way we’d have made it back unless someone held them off. They’d have popped out of that canyon and wasted the shuttle.”

Barrett was livid. “Damn it, Gomp, he was our passenger, we have to look out for passengers.”

“He was also dying,” Doctor Dodd added.

“Excuse me?”

Janice Dodd turned in her seat. “Why do you think I insisted on coming along? I got his medical records by hyperphone from the Navy, right before we left the ship. Colonel Feller had an inoperable pancreatic cancer, that metastasized to his liver, kidneys, hell, half his internal organs. He only had a matter of weeks left. He had to have been in agony, Captain. Frankly, I don’t know how he stayed on his feet.”

“So you’re saying,” Barrett began,

“He may have finally found what he was looking for,” Dodd concluded.

Gomp said nothing, just buckled himself into a bucket seat and slumped miserably as the shuttle pounded up the gravity well to the ship.  Behind them, a new sun blossomed briefly on the surface, rocking the shuttle slightly in the shock wave as it sped away from the former location of the slaver’s base.

Twenty silent minutes later, the shuttle docked at its port on the underside of the Shade Tree. Crew and refugees climbed out of the hatch.

Captain Barrett emerged last from the shuttle, breaking an ancient protocol that said a Captain was last in and first out of a shuttle. She looked around to see the Exec standing in the small sally bay.

“Indira,” Barrett waved the Exec over and gestured to the young girls huddled together by the hatch. “We’ll need to find a berth for those four girls; Doctor Dodd is taking them, Sassy and Mickie to Medical first to check ‘em out, then I want them all resting. They’ve been through a lot.”

“You all have.”

“Yeah, but we’re home now – close as we get these days. We still have to get these girls back to Tarbos before our job is done. I suppose we’ll have to talk to the Feds, too – they were selling those girls to someone. There are other girls out there that need to get home.”

“I’ll send a hyperphone message,” Krishnavarna said, “Fill them in, let them know we’re coming.”

“Good idea.”

“What shall I tell them about the nuke?”

Barrett looked at her Executive Officer, her expression carefully blank. “What nuke?”

Krishnavarna returned her Captains’ gaze for a moment, nodded, and walked away down the corridor.

Hector Gomp walked up, his carbine in one meaty hand, a shiny dangling object in the other. “Cap’n,” he said, “the Colonel gave me this right before… Well, you know.”

“A datachip?”

“And his dog tags. I think it’s his will, Cap’n. He made me promise to look at it, follow the instructions on the chip.”

“You want to look at it alone?”

“I’d just as soon you were there, Cap’n.”

“All right – let’s use the terminal in the mess room.”

Barrett took a moment to once more reassure the girls that they were safe and on their way home, then motioned to Gomp to follow her up the two ladders to the crew’s mess room.

Hector Gomp sat down at the small table bearing the room’s small communal terminal. He looked at the chip in his hand and sighed.

“Well, let’s see what’s on this.” He plugged the datachip into the mess room’s terminal. A second later, the grizzled image of Colonel Feller appeared on the terminal’s screen.

“Gomp, if you’re seeing this,” the image said, “then it’s because I’ve finally gone tits-up for good, and you’re now my executor. It also means that I found what I was looking for when I signed on with your Captain, so don’t feel bad about it. I’m not the sort to die in bed. So, let’s move on to closing out my personal business.”

“Executor? Me?” Gomp breathed.

“On this chip, you’ll find a complete listing of all of my assets and properties, on Earth, Tarbos and Halifax. My attorney, Mark Reynolds of Reynolds, Fujikawa and Riss in Mountain View, will handle disposing of those properties. As I have no surviving family, I want the proceeds to go to the Marine Orphans’ Education Fund. They have offices on Earth, Tarbos, Caliban, Halifax and Zed.”

“My memoirs, such as they are, are also on this chip. Give them to the Marine Corps Museum on the Tarbos Fleet Dock. Let those keyboard jockeys decide if they’re worth publishing or not.”

“Finally, whatever remains of me, I want cremated and scattered to the winds over Cook Inlet at Kenai, Alaska, Earth. Kenai was a great place when I was a boy, and I suppose it’s as good a place as any for my last remaining vestiges.” On the screen, the Colonel smiled. “I haven’t seen the place since I was twenty years old. I imagine it’s changed some, but you should still be able to find the beach all right.”

“That’s all I have to say. You’re a good man, Gomp, and a good Marine. It was a pleasure serving alongside you. Take care of your ship and your Captain. Semper Fi.”

The screen went blank.

“Well,” Gomp muttered. He looked up. “Cap’n?”

“We’ll head for Earth,” Barrett agreed. “Right after we drop those girls off at Tarbos.”

“Captain,” Gomp said, “Thank you.”

“Thank him,” Barrett said, pointing at the blank terminal screen. “Without him, none of us would be here.”

***

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