Defender

37

“That’s the Hornet,” Captain Drago said, as they closed on their target.

“What’s left of her,” Kris agreed. Half the engines were shot away. The hull had been holed clear through in three, maybe four places. The ship now tumbled in space, derelict.

The docking bays were empty. The longboats were gone.

“It appears to have been evacuated,” Kris said. “Comm, broadcast on the longboat frequencies that we’re here.”

That brought no reply. Ahead of them, the planet turned. They continued broadcasting as Captain Drago brought them into a parking orbit a hundred kilometers from the hulk. The planet remained silent, refusing to give up its secret.

“Sensors,” Kris ordered, “get with the boffins and map that planet. Somewhere down there are four longboats and a gig. They can’t have disappeared. Find them.”

What they found was a planet that looked like a pit of hell. Or maybe what Earth itself looked like when giant dinosaurs roamed it. The huge landmass that rolled below them was covered with dark swamps and marshes. Huge creatures chased the smaller ones, and rarely did they evade becoming dinner.

“How could humans survive down there?” was a question Kris heard far too often as the mapping progressed.

“Even if the humans haven’t, monsters don’t eat longboats. Find me the boats, guys. Find me those longboats.”

The search continued.

It was near the end of their sixth orbit, over nine hours after they began, that the morning beneath them coughed up an island. A volcanic central core rose almost to the clouds, surrounded by sandy beaches and reefs. There, drawn up on the water’s edge of a lagoon protected by the reef, were the four missing longboats and a smaller gig.

The longboats were as dead as beached whales, their antimatter pods exhausted. Unfortunately, a study of the island revealed it as dead as the boats. No smoke rose from fires. No sign of human habitation showed on the optical scans.

“They couldn’t have come this far and . . .” Kris ran out of words.

Captain Drago turned to Jack. “Colonel, prepare a Marine landing party. You drop next orbit. I would recommend fully armored space suits.”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air. If that planet’s a killer, we won’t bring it back.”

An hour later, Kris gave Jack a kiss. “Find them, if you can,” she whispered, “but don’t you go dying on me.”

“Trust me. I’m good at not doing that. I’ve had a lot of practice around you.”

Kris would have slugged him, but he was in full armor, and even a squid had to learn sooner or later not to punch people with hides as tough as Marines.

“And thank you for not coming,” Jack whispered back.

“I’m learning to be a boring senior officer,” Kris grumbled. “Don’t get too senior, or I’ll be telling you not to go fun places, either. It would serve you right, you know.”

That got a chuckle out of Jack, and Gunny at his elbow, even as the NCO tapped the watch at his wrist. Their time together was gone.

Kris drifted back, and Jack shoved off for Longboat 1. He didn’t look back, and she didn’t expect him to.

Kris glided back to the bridge. All good stuff was going on elsewhere. Why wait for it to be processed and passed along to her station? There was a limit to how much she’d let herself be senior officered out of the fun.

As she went, she couldn’t help but think about her and Jack. She’d often wondered how a woman could kiss her man and wave him off to where he might die. Now she found the answer. She did it because she had to. Jack was Jack, and he had a job to do and it was a job worth doing.

Meanwhile, Kris was Kris, and she had a job to do, as well. “Nelly, get ready to spawn some nanos. That wreck ahead of us came with two good reactors and four 24-inch pulse lasers. It may be a hunk of junk, but it’s my hunk of junk, and I will not ignore anything that might help me and mine stay alive.”