• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

>Lopez 1510 hours

Lopez shook the pain out of her hand. Her knuckles stung. “Never hit someone in the jaw, MacCraw.” But, damn, on some level, it had felt good. She’d wanted to do it for a while.

He gaped at her. “But you just did! Sarge!”

“Silly of me,” she said, turning to Smith, who’d staggered to the floor, holding his face, blood on his chin. “Very silly.” She slammed one regulation navy boot into his gut so hard he curled around her foot, the force exploding saliva from his mouth.

“Sarge!” What outfit did MacCraw think he’d joined? The Lady’s Auxiliary Gardening Society?

“You know what that thing was, you lying son of a bitch.” Lopez ignored MacCraw. “Virus my ass. Mahmoud, search him again.”

Four rosary beads in her mind, possibly six more hanging in the balance. She flexed her fingers. Yeah, never hit someone in the jaw, unless it was utterly necessary.

“Still nothing,” Mahmoud reported.

Smith looked a little too smug about that. She was beginning to think he couldn’t help himself.

“Take off his shoes. Check his tighty whities, if you have to. Check his damn body cavities!”

“Sarge!” Mahmoud looked as mortified as Smith.

Lopez curled her lip in a snarl. Didn’t need to say anything further.

Nothing on Smith’s body, who flinched away from the rough hands on him. But then:

“Sarge,” Mahmoud couldn’t conceal the relief in his voice. He rose, Smith’s shoes in one hand, an identity pass in the other. “I found this.”

Lopez read it. “Office of Naval Intelligence, Section 3, Major John Smith, Research and Development.” The foulest tasting title she’d ever uttered. “Lovely.”

ONI. Spooks. Wraiths. The mystery was suddenly a whole lot less mysterious, and Lopez found that didn’t make her any happier.

Smith wheezed suddenly, sucking in a huge gulp of air, face beet-red and not just from the punch.

“Officer on deck, soldiers,” Lopez said to the others as she crouched down beside Smith, if that was even really his name. “Why didn’t you identify yourself?” She thought she had a good idea why. Whatever Smith’s mission had been, that mission had gone belly-up. Not just failed, but failed in a spectacular, amazing, epic way.

He choked and coughed, curled up to protect his belly.

“Why didn’t you identify yourself, sir?” Lopez asked.

Percy spat on the ground. MacCraw still just stood there, stunned by the way events had broken.

Smith uncurled, up on one elbow. Now Lopez could see he was furious. “Let’s cut the bull-crap, Sergeant. I outrank you. It doesn’t matter why I didn’t give you my rank to begin with. Effective immediately, we abandon ship.” He stopped, coughed again. “I cannot be infected. I am privy to highly classified intelligence—I cannot be allowed to be infected. We abandon ship, return to the Red Horse, and destroy the Mona Lisa from a safe distance.”

When she didn’t answer, Smith said, “I know you had to come on a Pelican. Probably in the hangar right now, waiting for you.”

They stared at each other.

“That’s an order, Sergeant.” Quietly. In control of himself now.

A whole new game now, and Lopez didn’t have the right of it. Or did she? Smith could’ve told her men to arrest her, but he hadn’t.

“I have soldiers aboard I cannot contact. Sir,” she said.

The others looked on with a kind of fascination, witnessing something she knew they’d never seen before. Smith outranked her, but these were extenuating, extraordinary circumstances. Lopez was their Mama. Smith wanted to retreat to a safe place. Command was a privilege those under you had to grant. You assumed it, but you couldn’t assume it.

“There have been many casualties in this war,” Smith said. “There will be many more.”

Well. That sealed it. She bent at the knees and landed a punch from above. Damn, that hurt. Grabbed his collar and hauled him to his feet, shoving him back at Mahmoud and Singh.

“Sarge?” Percy said.

She nursed her hand. “Shit, ouch, shit. We’re going to the bridge. No spook is going to leave my kids in the dark and then scuttle the ship on them. Shit. Benti would haunt us if we did, and she’d be a real annoying