Let him wonder…

  “The Americans got what they wanted from Olek.” Ildeva sniffed. “What do they care if he is killed?” He gave a deep, dramatic sigh. “But Olek betrayed me. For CIA money, I’m sure. I saw him talking to your officer like such very good friends. You’re lucky they didn’t abandon you, too. They don’t value us like their own kind, Alexi.”

  Syrkin frowned. “I grew up in the USA. I’m an American citizen.”

  “What has it gotten you? You tell me they court-martialed you—demoted you for doing your job. They killed your brother! How do you know they didn’t intend to kill him all along?”

  That cut deep. Syrkin was loyal to the Rangers—to the US Army—and Burkett had made it sound like shooting Olek was a deeply regrettable accident.

  But maybe that was an officer covering his ass.

  ELEVEN

  Strickland, you’re with Burkett,” Mayweather said. “You make those maneuvering jets happen for us or don’t come back in.”

  “Yes sir,” Strickland said. “The air in here is getting kind of, uh, pungent anyway, Captain.”

  “We’ll ship washing machines and more soap next time, Sergeant.”

  She grinned. “Thank you very much, sir.”

  Burkett, Strickland, Dabiri, Lang, Andrews, and Carney were gathered around the Captain at the rear of the main cabin. They were floating in the air like a crowd of ghosts. Seven hours earlier, they’d been divided into watches and ordered to get rest when they could. Buckled loosely into a seat, some had managed to sleep.

  Ken Carney looked sick, Burkett thought. The Second Lieutenant held on tightly to a ceiling ring and swallowed hard from time to time, probably to keep from barfing.

  “Lang,” Mayweather said, “you’re in the copilot’s seat. Interface with the EVA team and generally do anything you can to help Ike.”

  “Can do, Captain.”

  “Andrews, you take Dorman—looks like he’s helping Rod now. Get him when he’s done with that, and you two conduct an inventory. Look for any oxygen bottles we don’t have listed. Water supplies, medical supplies, every useful thing we have. List it all, even ammunition.” This raised some eyebrows, but Mayweather chose not to elaborate. “Syrkin’s on sick list but he might be well enough to help out later today—we’ll see. Corporal Dabiri will check the biosuits.”

  He started to tuck his hand-screen away in his coat.

  “And me, sir?” Carney asked.

  Mayweather looked a little surprised, as if he’d forgotten about the Lieutenant.

  “Um—Lieutenant Carney, you go with Corporal Dabiri and inventory the biosuits. Count them—I think there’s enough for everyone, but do it anyway—and double-check to make sure they all look ship-shape. Don’t rush through it. Look them over real close. There’s a chance we’ll need them at some point. Dabiri’ll show you the suit locker.”

  “Captain,” Strickland said, “the biosuits are pretty flexible but they’re not exactly one-size-fits-all.”

  “Good point.” Mayweather nodded. “I think the only ones that are fitted are yours and the ones for the officers. If we need ’em, we may have to kinda shoehorn some people in. Getting Dupon into one might be an issue, what with his broken leg. Things get hairy, we may have to wear them all the time, so keep the helmet handy, just in case.”

  Ken Carney made an urp sound.

  Captain Mayweather glanced at him. “You’re not going to throw up, I hope, Lieutenant? Use the snap-bag if you are.”

  “No sir. Nothing to throw up.”

  Mayweather nodded. “The first couple days here, it’s a little hard to get the rations down,” he said. “And listen—if any of our scientific guests need to go to the head, or anywhere else, you take them, Carney. They know how, but they really need someone with them when they’re moving around, no matter what.”

  Carney winced at that. It was a job for a private or a non-com.

  “All right, any questions?” Mayweather asked.

  Des Andrews said, “Sir, it’s kind of another subject, but kind of not…”

  “Spit it out.”

  “We’re already late. I don’t know about you, but I gave an approximate time to my family I’d be returning… and anyway, our families know about how long these missions take. So—my folks have to be worried.”

  Burkett nodded. That same thought had been needling him. Ashley would be expecting him, or some word…

  “And when I was sitting up front,” Andrews went on, “I got the impression from what I heard from Sergeant Prosser that the Russians might be outing this mission. So—”

  “We’re all in the same fix,” Mayweather said, nodding gravely. “I’m planning to get some kind of word to our families, soon as we can figure out what we’re allowed to tell them. That’ll have to do you for now.”

  Andrews nodded. “Yes sir.”

  “Good. Let’s get to work. If there’s anything you’ve got to run by me, I’ll be in the computer compartment typing out a report—the XO is going to be going outside for a while.”

  Burkett and Strickland let go of their handholds and propelled themselves down the narrow passage with gentle tugs on pipes clamped to the wall, heading toward the rear storage deck.

  There was a good possibility the S-7 wouldn’t be able to land at Base Three or any other Army base. They might not have fuel to get that far, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have enough maneuvering for a guaranteed safe landing. It could go wrong and they could take out the operations building. If they crash-landed, the big orbcraft itself could become a flaming hell.

  Maybe they’d come down in the Arctic tundra. Or in the Sahara. Or in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

  Uncertainties just kept coming. Burkett thought of the domino lines people set up to make elaborate patterns. What was the pattern on this one? Where would it end up?

  “Lieutenant,” Linda said as they came to the closed steel hatch of the aft storage. “At some point we’re going down to L, and there are Russian weapons stations down at that orbit, floating quietly along pretending to be something else. Suppose we end up in range? You think they’ll fire on us again?”

  “Can’t be sure, but…” He looked through the thick window in the hatch. Everything he could see looked squared away. To the right of the door, the internal air-pressure indicator read STANDARD. “I’m going to guess there’s too many people watching now to launch another attack. They’d get busted.”

  “Maybe they don’t care.”

  Always a possibility—that someone doesn’t give a damn, he thought. Burkett tapped the little keypad and drew slightly back. The hatch clicked and hummed open. Air smelling of motor oil and gunpowder wafted out to them.

  Linda went through first, like a swimmer in the air, pushing off from the sides of the hatch. Burkett followed less gracefully, catching the toe of one boot on the raised bottom of the hatch frame. Straightening out, he let himself drift upward in the relatively high-ceilinged room—it was twice as high as the cabin—so he could look around.

  Nothing floated loose. Weapons locker seemed secure. Linda was opening the gear lockers. The extra oxygen tanks had been returned to their racks. The LTVs were secured to the deck. Reaching up, he pushed off from the ceiling and sank down to where she was at the burn-gear locker, looking over the fueling units they’d need on the EVA.

  “Bulky, these things, and we’ll need five.”

  “We’ll tether them like a chain behind us,” Burkett said.

  “They’ll clunk on the hull—might damage them, Lieutenant.”

  “Okay, two shorter tethers, one for each of us, and we’ll be crazy careful.”

  She drew a burn-feed unit carefully out. “Least it doesn’t weigh much here.”

  “Any hint on the comms when we’re going to hear about a rescue operation?” Burkett asked.

  “Not last I knew, sir.”

  “Captain says we need to assume it’s not coming.”

  She nodded. “I’ll get the tethers…”

  He took the complex of pipeage and wiring from her, an armful of machinery, and looked it over as she pushed off, once more seeming as if she could swim through the air.

  Assume help’s not coming, he thought as he looked over the burn-feed unit. Because even if it does, by the time they get it together, it’ll be too late.

  Eighteen hours of oxygen, the Captain had said…

  And now it was down to sixteen.

  * * *

  Ashley Burkett dialed the number again, as she had every five minutes for the last forty-five. She was sitting at the redwood picnic table in the shade of the liquid amber tree. Nate was in school. What would she tell him when he came home?

  Listening to the phone ring the requisite four times before the recording, once more she heard, “Lieutenant-Colonel Baxter is not currently available. Please call back, or call—”

  She hung up. “I have a right to know, Baxter,” she muttered. She’d tried the other number, and some brusque clerk had taken her message. No one called back.

  The hell with that. She’d keep trying until someone answered.

  Ashley waited the five minutes, nervously tapping the cell phone on the bench. In another minute she’d be up, pacing back and forth. She thought about having a Chardonnay. No, it was too early in the day. But maybe it wasn’t.

  A little under an hour earlier she’d seen something deeply disturbing on the WorldTalk channel.

  “…citing a leak from an unnamed intelligence department, sources affirm the rumor that a US Army Airborne spacecraft used for covert operations has been struck by a missile while in lower Earth orbit. The source says that the crew are unhurt, but the spacecraft was damaged and may have limited resources.

  “A statement from China’s Orbital Navy Command states that it tracked what may have been a missile before losing sight of it over the Atlantic. The Japanese Space Service reports that a SubOrbital craft fitting the description of known US infiltration prototypes has been spotted in an unusually high orbit…

  “The Pentagon had no comment.

  “WorldTalk military analyst former Gen. Lawrence Lopez has connected the alleged missile attack with Russia’s complaint to the United Nations Security Council regarding an alleged covert operation carried out in Moldova, in which numerous men in a monastery were—according to the Russian Ambassador—‘summarily executed by American black ops commandos…”

  Ashley shook her head. Summarily executed? A lie, of course, but in the age of internet disinformation, lies could live on and on.

  Nate shouldn’t have to deal with that craziness, she thought. But he’s going to.

  Goddammit, Arthur Burkett. You dragged me and your son into this.

  Of course, she’d had the discussion with her husband, more than once. “You knew the life of an Army wife when you married me.” And, “You knew it was covert combat.” With everything that kind of duty entailed. But there had been an understanding when they’d married. He was going to transfer out of combat-operations within five years.

  The five years had come and gone.

  Before this call, she’d been on the phone with Laney Placer, a family friend working at SubOrbital 3 as a supply sergeant. She knew what orbcraft had been deployed. Laney found a roundabout way of telling her that no other orbcraft had been launched besides the S-7. Which meant that the one referred to in the news report was Art’s.

  She ticked the phone app for WorldTalk news. Under a talking head there was a chyron:

  DID AMERICAN COMMANDOS KILL 20 MONKS?

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” she muttered.

  They’d killed twenty somebodies, anyhow, she thought, but not monks. Were there Ranger casualties?

  Is Art all right?

  She looked at the time, and dialed Baxter’s office again.

  * * *

  “We’ll give a press conference,” Lieutenant Colonel Baxter said. “We’ll tell them as much as we can. Which won’t be much.” He was just a window on Chance’s computer screen, but he emanated determination. The guy was sure of himself.

  “I agree,” General Carney said. “They’re slandering us. We need to clear the air, and we need to explain our movements when we launch rescue.”

  “I’m sure we should make any announcements yet,” Darrell Winch said. The Secretary of Defense was a thick-bodied, thin-lipped man in a navy-blue suit, his round head shaven nearly bald. “Classified is classified.”

  “It can be declassified, Mr. Secretary,” Chance pointed out.

  In the little monitor window next to him, the Secretary of State shook her head. Laura McCallister was a big woman, tall and deep voiced, yet a slump in her shoulders hinted at her age. Her auburn-dyed hair was fashionably cut, but her broad face was seamed with age and stress. “It’s tantamount to saying we committed an act of war, and a breach of international law—and we’re throwing that in their faces.”

  “We rescued an American citizen,” Carney said, “and two other hostages who were from allied nations. To me, the only question is, do we tell them everything about Moscow’s involvement.”

  Baxter made a sound of exasperation. “The Russians are saying we killed a bunch of monks, Madame Secretary. We can’t let that stand!”

  “I’ve already denied that accusation,” McCallister said. “We asserted that it was ridiculous.”

  Chance cleared his throat.

  “One of those so-called ‘monks’ is now a prisoner on the S-7. We can show his video image from the spacecraft, if we have to. His face can be identified by UN security, and we have Moldovan officials admitting the place hasn’t had a monk in it for more than a hundred years. No one believes the story anyway—Moscow hasn’t even repeated the claim.”

  “Now they’re hammering on a so-called invasion of Moldova,” Baxter said.

  Depends on your definition of invasion, Chance thought. He leaned back in his office chair. It was 7:00 P.M. and his secretary had gone home. She could have brought his nicotine gum, dammit. “Ma’am, as you know, Moldova is not a member of NATO. The latest statement from the Kremlin reminds us that Russia is their ally.”

  “Moldova’s officially neutral,” Carney said.

  “You can be neutral and still have allies who agree to protect you,” Chance said, running a hand over his unshaven jaw. “Russia can claim that it’s bound to retaliate militarily against anyone invading that country. They can call our operation an invasion.”

  “It was not an invasion,” McCallister said, “but it did break international law. There’s going to be a condemnation from the Security Council.”

  “The hostages make it special circumstances,” Baxter asserted, remembering to add, “Ma’am.”

  “Chance, what do you mean by retaliation?” Carney asked. “What they’ve already done? Or something more?”

  “Using their logic,” Chance said, “they can rationalize both the initial strike at the S-7 orbcraft and a follow-up. There could be another attack.”

  “That would be an act of war against the United States,” the Secretary of State said, flapping a hand dismissively. “Not likely to happen.”

  “It already has,” Chance said. “With the first missile. They hoped to get away with it. An orbcraft blows up and no one knows why. But they didn’t pull that off. Now they want cover, in case they feel like they need to follow through.”

  “Suppositions,” Winch snorted.

  “If we don’t speak out proactively,” Chance said, “they may use our silence as their cue to take out the S-7.” Something popped up in the urgent messages window on his hand-screen. “One quick moment, folks, I’ve got something coming in from the Russia team. It’s urgent. Could be relevant.”

  When he saw what it was, he rocked back in his chair.

  Well, this ought to make the point.

  Chance took a deep breath, and said, “Ah, it seems like a TiL survivor managed to get some footage of our troops breaking into the monastery. There were recognizable faces, and recognizable uniforms.”

  “Was someone going to tell me this?” Winch growled.

  “Just this moment learned about it, sir,” Chance said. “It’ll be all over the net in minutes. What’s more, some trucker in the area got a shot of the S-7 taking off. You can’t see it very well—but clear enough. They’re going to flood worldwide media with this stuff.”

  “That’s it,” Baxter said. “We need to get ahead of them and make a statement. We need to spill our guts.”

  The Secretary of State closed her eyes, shook her head just once. Then she sighed.

  “Yeah. I guess we do. I’ll look into declassification.”

  * * *

  We have to do this fast, Burkett told himself, but we also have to do it right. And no mistakes. A mistake out here could end their lives in a hot minute.

  It’d be a cold minute now. Night had swept over this side of the Earth, its darkness spangled by city lights. Their biosuits were working hard to keep them warm in the extreme frigidity of space. The moon was a large gray ball scored by meteor hits, and the Earth was a cobalt sphere, so close he couldn’t see the whole of this hemisphere.

  Restoring the maneuvering jets was vital, even in a jury-rigged way. Without them, they wouldn’t be able to maneuver in orbit, and he had no confidence in a rescue anytime soon. Even with the President’s approval, it would take time to get it organized. This wasn’t like sending a Coast Guard chopper to a sinking yacht.

  We’ve got to help ourselves.

  They were on their second burn-feed replacement, and it had been hard work getting it where it needed to be, because they’d had to walk most of the way. There was only one airlock, at the forward end of the vessel. Linda had been able to float along for the transmitter power job, but this time they had to move into areas of the hull with few or no handholds. And the two of them drifting along with the tethered equipment would probably have tangled.