“Cloaked Tiger,” the admiral growled. “I’d heard the Orenkans had gotten a couple of prototypes, but I didn’t think—where’d they get the money to finance that, damn it? Are they even importing food and feeding their people anymore? Or just buying weapons?”
More lasers streaked past them, one clipping the side of the shuttle. It shuddered and groaned. As if it needed more damage. Gregor flew lower to the ground, following every dip so the terrain would cover them, even if only for a few seconds. One of their thrusters was out, and they were reduced to nearly half speed, not to mention he was struggling to keep them flying straight.
He glanced at the new coordinates, even though they were already burned into his brain. That tunnel ought to be up here, somewhere close. But if it was nothing more than an unmarked hole among the hills and glaciers, he might fly right past it without ever seeing it. No, there was something. Gun platforms, and was that a shield generator?
He checked the sensors—there was a shield. And it was up. Gregor ground his teeth. The control panel was awash in warning lights. There was no chance of the shuttle making it out of the atmosphere right now, even without the fighters snapping at its heels.
“Admiral, do you have any way of contacting your people?” Gregor asked. “Letting them know you’re in this shuttle?”
“I
had
a way, but those felons that dragged me down to the basement took everything.”
The shuttle rocked again under a new barrage of fire. Gregor couldn’t maneuver it fast enough to dodge, not anymore. He looked over his shoulder, meeting Val’s alarmed eyes and wishing… wishing he had talked to her more, that they had flown this last mission together, that they had… He shook his head bleakly. So much left unsaid.
“Shield’s down,” Summers barked.
Gregor spun back to the controls.
“They saw us coming,” Summers added. “There. In, in, go.”
Gregor didn’t need the order. He was already veering for the dark tunnel opening between the gun platforms. It wasn’t much bigger than the shuttle, which was shuddering and jerking alarmingly against his hands, but he threaded the needle, slipping into a long ice tunnel. The big guns boomed behind them, keeping those other ships away, he hoped. The shields should be thrown back up again too.
Light banks lined the narrow passage, but they didn’t do much do brighten the way: half of them were turned off and the other half glowed weakly or flickered. Still, it was enough; the sensors guided him further. They told him that a chamber lay ahead—perhaps the same chamber they had been seeking from the collapsed entrance on the other side of the mountain. He didn’t slump back and breathe a sigh of relief until he saw it with his own eyes.
Another shuttle and a handful of fighter craft like the ones that had been chasing them were parked inside. There was plenty of space for the Mandrake Company craft, and Gregor picked a spot, setting down as calmly as he could in the creaking, injured craft.
As soon as they landed, the admiral jumped to his feet. He punched the button for the hatch and jogged out without a word for Gregor. Normally, Gregor wouldn’t have thought anything of it—expressions of gratitude often seemed superfluous and unnecessary to him—but in this case, he found himself longing for some little praise from the man who had been a role model to him once, the man who’d had the career Gregor himself had once thought he would have. Maybe Summers had been disappointed by the flying at the end or by Gregor’s failure to contact his ship sooner. Or maybe, now that he knew who Gregor was, who he had once been, Summers would be disappointed no matter what Gregor did.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder. “I’m glad you got us out of that, sir.”
Sir. It made sense to go back to more formal address now that they were among others, but something about that formality, after they had been teasing each other—all right, she had been teasing him far more than he had been teasing her—was like another stab in the heart. He forced himself to give her a nod and respond.
“For the moment.” He waved at the flashing lights on the console.
“Yes, that’s impressive.” Val squeezed his shoulder and let go. “I’ve never seen so many systems errors and notifications of equipment malfunctions at once. Nothing’s going to blow up, is it?”
“I don’t think so, but nothing’s going to fly again, either, not unless they have some spare parts down here. And a couple of mechanics they would be willing to loan us. Given what I heard over the comm when I contacted the ship, I wouldn’t bet on Mandrake Company being able to come down to rescue us any time soon.”
Val grimaced. “I guess that means I need to be polite to the admiral and not—” she glanced toward the open door, “—tell him what I really think.”
“Perhaps a prudent idea,” Gregor said, his gaze drawn back to all of the alarms. Even if these people
did
have parts and trained people to spare, the shuttle might not fly again. Captain Mandrake would not be pleased about that. With the rest of the company fighting in orbit, he might not make a priority of retrieving his broken shuttle, either. Gregor and Val could be stuck in this underground bunker indefinitely.
Chapter 8
Val walked down the shuttle ramp to take a look at the damage from the outside. Her jaw tumbled so far open it almost tripped her. The lights flashing all over the control panel might have been worrisome, but this—scorch marks, smoke, and spots where the hull had been cut through to the insulation and wiring beneath—made it real. She shivered, and not only because of the cold air in the underground hangar. The marks showed her how close they had been to not making it at all. They would need a professional patch job for the exterior and, judging by the black smoke still billowing from the engine compartment, a lot of spare parts for the interior.
Gregor gave the damage a glance, but headed straight for the group of people already gathering around Admiral Summers. He must have noticed Val wasn’t following—nobody was going to invite her to a command meeting, so she figured her place would be back at the ship—because he stopped and looked back at her.
“Are you injured?” he asked.
“Nothing a stiff shot of whiskey wouldn’t heal.” Even if the planet was covered in ice, they must have greenhouses that grew something fermentable somewhere.
Gregor’s brow did that I’m-faintly-puzzled furrow of his. “Because of its anesthetic properties? There are more appropriate pharmaceuticals in the first-aid kit. Shall I retrieve it for you?”
“No, I’d rather have alcohol. Don’t you ever feel the urge to imbibe? Especially after a stressful and harrowing experience?”
“I imbibe alcohol during social occasions when I’ve been informed it is appropriate.”
“Ah.” Val imagined countless colleagues of his over the years trying to get him smashed to see what he would be like drunk. She admitted some curiosity in that area herself. “And do you go to many social occasions?”
“I avoid them whenever possible. To relax after a harrowing experience, I work on my models.”
Models? Oh, the spaceships and airplanes hanging in his cabin. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have constructed them all from kits. That had to represent thousands of hours of work. Maybe his life was more stressful and harrowing than she had realized.
“I suppose you can work on a much bigger model this time.” Val pointed to the battered shuttle.
A bleak smile crossed his face. “Yes, but let’s check in and see if our services are required here first.”
“And see if they have a team of mechanics and some spare parts for us?”
“That too.”
A boom sounded somewhere overhead, and the ground shuddered. Someone must be dropping bombs on the mountain. Great. The other people in the hangar glanced toward the ceiling, but their faces were more long-suffering than alarmed. Val didn’t know whether to find that heartening or not. At least it should mean the ceiling wouldn’t come crashing down at any second.
Following Gregor, Val walked toward the group of people in the center of the hangar. The size of the crowd grew with every passing moment, but none of the men or women looked like soldiers or hardened warriors. They wore scruffy brown overalls; many had gray hair, and only a few carried weapons. The dozen-odd one-man sky fighters parked in the hangar were at least forty years old, and the dented green personnel shuttle might have come from another century altogether. A couple of other ships looked more appropriate for carrying ore than defending a continent.
“
You’re
the base commander?” Admiral Summers was asking when Val walked into earshot. He stood at the edge of the group, his fists propped against his hips.
“He’s already making friends, I see,” she murmured.
“Pardon?” Gregor asked.
“Nothing.” She might not like the admiral, but he might be these people’s best hope to survive the onslaught from their conquering neighbors. And, since Val was stuck down here for the moment, he might be her best hope too. An unpleasant thought.
“Yes, Admiral,” a woman responded. Her gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was one of the people with a laser pistol holstered on her belt. She also wore an optical computer over one eye and carried a tablet clutched against her chest. “I’m Dora Anstrider.” Her voice was polite but had a hint of steel in it, as well.
The men and women surrounding her appeared interested in the admiral’s appearance, but they were also standing behind their leader.
“What’s your background?” Summers asked. “You’re a non-combatant, I assume.”
“I was a teacher before the war escalated.”
“A teacher. I see.” Summers eyed the other people. “Does anyone here have combat experience?”
“Admiral,” Anstrider said, “we all have experience killing and losing comrades in battle. We’ve been at war for years, and none of us remember a time when there weren’t hostilities of some sort between us and the Orenkans. You grew up here. You must remember what it’s like.”
Summers sighed and pushed a hand through his hair as he gazed around the cavern. “Yes, but I was told that there would be
some
forces at my disposal.”
“There are more people on the coasts, closer to the Orenkan strike zones. We’re mostly miners turned fighters here. We have a few pilots to help defend these mountains; this is one of the richest ore areas, and it’s also where we grow a lot of our food.”
Val blinked, looking around at the dim hangar and the half dozen tunnels leading deeper into the mountain. The bleak man-made passages featured corrugated metal and bare stone, not trees and gardens. Of course, there were ways to farm without sunlight—even Mandrake Company raised fruits and vegetables with aeroponics—but it was hard to imagine feeding a population off what one could grow underground.
“Miners and a few flyboys? That’s it?” Summers asked.
“We have a geologist too.” Anstrider’s humor and smile were bleak, but Val decided she liked the woman. More than she liked the admiral, anyway.
“Well, that’s special, isn’t it?” Summers shoved his hand through his hair again. “Get your top people together for a meeting. We need to get to work right away.” He waved to her tablet. “You have any way to communicate with your other bases, or has that been knocked out? We had satellites when I was a kid, I remember, but the Orenkans made a hobby out of shooting them down.”
“We have cables laid all throughout the tunnels, all the way across the continent. I can get you in touch with all of the other base commanders.”
“Yes, let’s do it.” Summers waved for her to lead him… who knew where? Apparently important staff meetings couldn’t be held in the middle of underground hangars.
Anstrider nodded but first stopped to speak to a woman in her forties or fifties. She pointed to Gregor and Val and said something, then headed away with the admiral and most of the crowd.
The woman looked more like a mechanic than an aide, with numerous tools sticking out of her coveralls. But maybe she was one of the pilots. She walked up to Val and Gregor—Gregor was gazing wistfully after the admiral. Apparently Summers wasn’t going to invite a grubby mercenary along, even though Gregor probably had more military experience than most of the people here. But then, Mandrake Company had done what was required of it, hadn’t it? Summers was here and alive. If there was more to their mission than dropping him off, Val hadn’t heard about it.
“I’m Theresa Zimmerman,” the woman told them. “I’m the squadron leader until Sam gets back from the coast. I fly the carver over there.” She waved to one of the winged air fighters. “And I keep the books. Most of us have multiple jobs.”
Maybe that meant she took care of doling out finances to mercenaries. At this point, getting that combat bonus wasn’t looming large in Val’s mind—escaping the planet without being killed had taken most of the space in there—and she assumed payments would go through the captain, anyway, but it would be nice to know if reparations might be made for the shuttle. And if parts were even available for purchase down here. If the sparse hangar was any indicator, these people might not have anything to spare.
“Commander Thatcher,” Gregor said, inclining his head slightly. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, not one to shake hands or use other physical greetings it seemed. “This is Cadet Calendula.”
“Cadet?” Theresa asked.
Yes, at thirty-three, Val was old to be starting over as a cadet somewhere, but what could she do? “I’m new to the outfit. This is a training run of sorts for me.”
Theresa’s graying brows rose, and she looked at the shuttle. “Ah.”
Yeah, that about summed it up.
“Is your shuttle as dead on the ice as it looks?” Theresa asked.
Val nodded at the same time as Gregor said, “A mechanic or engineer should examine it thoroughly before an assessment is made.”
Behind them, something clanked and fell to the deck inside the shuttle.
Theresa raised her brows again.
“It is likely it won’t be flying as is,” Gregor added.
“Your mission was just to drop off the admiral, wasn’t it?” Theresa asked. “While the rest of your people kept the other mercenary fleet busy? Have you been in touch with them? Are they going to be able to pick you up?”