Up Against It - M. J. Locke [171]
He realized that this was a turning point. I’m acclimating, he thought in mild surprise. I read her. Who would’ve thought?
He dropped down to stand before her. “A fellow Downsider, I surmise,” he said. She saluted—which felt both odd and completely natural to him—with a smile that exposed a dimple in her chin.
“That is correct, sir. Sergeant Kayla Maez-Gibson of the Phocaea Cluster Guard, Sixth Spaceborne Division, at your service. Formerly of British Columbia, Canada, Earth. Commissioner Pearce had very little time to brief us,” she told him, “but I understand this is a rescue mission?”
“Yes. We have four civilians in what we believe is a hostage situation. It’s on a faraway stroid about a kay-klick off the treeway—ETA twenty-eight minutes. The bad guys are tied to a Martian crime syndicate. We aren’t certain how many of them there are, but my dockworkers report there are at least four, and perhaps more.”
“How are they armed?”
“Unknown. They may have heavy weaponry in addition to hand weapons. How much experience does your squad have in hostile engagements?”
“Limited, sir. The team is seasoned in rescue ops among the faraway stroids, and we have run up against pirates before. But it never resulted in an exchange of fire. We do train intensively with the latest simulations.”
Here we go again, Sean thought grimly. “Well, you may finally get a chance to put that training to use. My chief engineer has a briefing for us as soon as you’re ready.”
“No time like the present, sir.”
He called Mitch and had him hail Shelley. Sean plugged the sergeant in, and Shelley appeared in their shared wavespace. “Chief, we’ve detected a blast in the vicinity of the target rock’s location.”
Sean exchanged a glance with the sergeant.
“Surface or subsurface?” he asked.
“Surface. No sign of major damage to the stroid, but we’re tracking some unmapped debris that appears to have originated from the rock. It appears to have been thrown our way before the blast,” she said. “Which I can’t explain. Second, a series of distress calls has begun. There appear to be eleven separate signals originating from an orbit around the rock.”
“Survivors?”
Shelley shook her head. “We think they’re remotes. Someone threw them into orbit only a dozen seconds before the explosion.”
“OK. Thanks, Shelley. Hail me if you have any other updates.” He signed off and turned to the sergeant. “You look as if you have a thought.”
“An unpleasant one, sir. The explosion may have been due to the launching of the distress-call remotes. In other words, the blast may be a reprisal.”
“Too true.” Sean thought of Geoff and the others, and remembered his own words to them: everything is legit. He remembered telling their parents he would make sure they weren’t put into danger. Sean was never one for second-guessing past decisions. You make the best call you can with the knowledge you have. But his best call had not been good enough. He planned to make sure the perpetrator paid.
* * *
Xuan asked Kamal and Amaya to have their minerbots remove and pack up the charges Geoff had planted earlier. They also took automated distress beacons, spare air, food, fuel, compressed gas canisters, and some other supplies. The distress beacons should bring someone soon, but even if not, with sufficient supplies Xuan knew how to get them back to the treeways, and thus to Phocaea. If it weren’t for the mobsters outside the airlock.
Kamal reported, “We’re missing minerbots—a good thirty or so. And a bunch of distress beacons. I think Geoff was trying to get a signal out.”
“Let us hope he succeeded, then,” Xuan said. He checked the charges Geoff had set. They had radio-activated detonators. He spent a minute reviewing the detonator tutorial, and ran through the simulator twice to plant the knowledge in his body memory. Then they headed to the longwall.