Black Box (13 page)

“Hey!” Rodrigo shouted. “Is this your first
day?”

He looked at her. “Have a look at this
thing.”

“I’ve got enough trouble just looking at
you.”

He huffed.

“Keep your hands to yourself.”

Put out by the display, Tedesco began her
march into the trees. Cummings and Bonamo hesitated, waiting for
Rodrigo to fall in behind her, but the sergeant ushered them on
ahead. She wanted to keep a close eye on them.

Once totally engulfed by the jungle, Tedesco
signaled the ship to make sure that communications were still
available. Apparently, Rollins had misjudged the effect of the
jungle because the reception was already scratchy. A couple of
hundred more yards and they wouldn’t be able to speak at all.
Bonamo, the sack of relay dishes on his shoulder, was sent back
into range in order to hammer one into the ground.

During a planetside expedition, Captain
Beckett rarely sat in Control. The best seat in the house was in
the Computer Control Room. From Compcon, a crew member could view
through any or all of the ship’s external cameras at any time.
There was a screen for each and they were situated in such a way so
that the screen faced the exact angle as the camera. This was a
design feature that existed on every UESF ship. As a result, the
shape of Compcon was different on each ship. To match the design of
the
Valor
, Compcon was long and narrow, with four levels of
cameras and two fading alleys to represent the wings. There were
two stations for manning, but on Beckett’s ship, Rollins was often
alone. In fact, Beckett often suspected that this isolation was
what had attracted Rollins to the
Valor
in the first place.
The stations shared a console and four monitors that detailed
statistics and the status of operations on the ship. It was the job
of the technician on duty to make sure all of the automatic feeds
sent that information to the proper parties (engineering,
navigation, medical, weapons, etc…). If the feeds were misfiring,
it was the up to the tech to do the job manually while working to
fix the automatic feeds. Rollins was exceedingly good at dispensing
information. In fact, Beckett often suspected he was doing it
manually by choice.

Since its inception, many captains had taken
to running battles from Compcon. On New Earth ships, it was
standard practice. Still, weapons and navigation, while accessible
from Compcon, were more difficult to handle. Captain Beckett liked
his control room. If he needed to fly, he could fly (not that
piloting was one of his finer skills). If he needed to shoot, he
could shoot.

Now, though, he sat beside Lawrence Rollins,
ignoring a man who preferred to be ignored. On one monitor was a
photo scan of the terrain, beamed to them from the tracking
satellite, matching orbit above. Each member of the expedition
carried a chip which transmitted a signal to the tracking
satellite. That signal was then bounced to the
Valor
so that
Beckett could see where his people were and what they were doing.
The mossy clouds prevented the satellite from taking actual photos
of the expedition. Audio communication didn’t seem able to reach
the satellite either, thus the need for the relays. Still, the tiny
blips were more than enough. Watching them, Beckett listened to
their discussions through his earpiece and imagined the scenery. He
said nothing and would continue to be silent unless circumstances
warranted his official involvement. Though he didn’t think Tedesco
could handle even this small an operation, he was determined to
play it by the book. Let her hang herself.

“Hammer in another relay, Lieutenant. Ten
yards back.”

The blips stopped moving and the one that
was Bonamo moved back a distance that was almost imperceptible on
his screen. He could magnify it, of course, but there was no reason
for that at the moment. The party trudged on. After a few minutes,
he ordered another relay and then, a short time later, another one.
Based on the distance, and Rollins’ assessment, which had already
proven uncharacteristically incorrect, Tedesco had equipped them
with seven relay dishes. He hoped it would be enough.

All of a sudden, Beckett’s ear was filled
with whining static. Ripping out the piece, he looked at it, at the
screens. Rollins was typing something on his keyboard, a series of
numbers in a black panel on his monitor. Beckett didn’t bother to
question him. One of the relays had gone dead, killing the
communications. He quickly checked the satellite feed and saw the
four blips moving in a loose formation. Tedesco had to have
realized that the communications had gone out. Either she was
unconcerned or didn’t feel that it merited turning back. In her
place, Beckett couldn’t say that he would have acted differently.
With the satellite feed, they could still be tracked. But that feed
didn’t tell enough of a story for a captain of a ship to know that
his crew was safe. The four of them could be dead and laying on the
ground and the chips that sent the signal wouldn’t know the
difference.

Of course, they were all still moving.

Beckett punched a number into the intercom.
“MacDonald?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Choose a squad and prep the rumbler.”

“Right away, sir.”

Rollins spared him a glance and then went
back to his work.

Ukpere chimed in over the network. “Don’t
you think you’re being hasty, sir?”

Beckett addressed the network at large. “The
next person who implies that I’m overreacting is gonna get the shit
kicked out of him.”

At about three hundred yards from Walker’s
landing site, the group stopped. Beckett leaned forward. For long
moments, there was no movement on the screen. Rollins leaned close
so that he could see and Tunsley started chattering over the
network. Beckett cut him out.

Then the blips split up. Tedesco and Bonamo
moved slowly parallel to the landing site while Rodrigo and
Cummings continued the approach.

“They split up,” Boone said, his voice
floating in over the channel from Control.

“I can see that, Boone,” Beckett
replied.

“Why did they split up?”

“How the hell should I know?” Beckett could
feel himself losing his patience. He was losing patience with the
mission, the expedition, and his officers. At the forefront, he was
second guessing his decision to send Tedesco instead of Boone. As
dumb as Boone could be, he was at least experienced. With Tedesco,
he couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what her actions were or the
impetus for those actions. There might be any number of reasonable
rationales for dividing the expedition, but Beckett couldn’t think
of one. At any sign of trouble, they should have made their way
back to the
Valor
.

And then, without any warning, all four
blips disappeared.

“What’s that?” came Applegate’s breathy
voice. “What happened?”

“The satellite feed was interrupted,”
Tunsley answered impatiently.

“How? What causes that?”

Beckett knew. “Gunfire.” And not the lasers
reported in Walker’s log. It took an explosive discharge to
interfere with the chip transmissions. It was a stupid glitch that
rendered the satellite chips useless in combat, but they weren’t
meant for that anyway. He switched over to MacDonald. “Are you
ready to go?”

“Yes, sir,” the foot soldier said, just a
bit too eagerly.

“Bring ‘em back, MacDonald. We’re not here
to fight a war.”

There was no answer over the intercom, but
the sensors came alive, reporting the hangar doors opening. Beneath
their feet, they could feel the vibrations of the rumbler as it
exited the ship.

The seconds ticked slowly by as Beckett
waited for the interference with the satellite feed to clear. In
truth, there were any number of disturbances that could cause the
blips that were his expedition to disappear. Environmental
disturbances were the most common. But nothing was so abrupt as
weapon discharge. With a thunderstorm or even an earthquake, the
blips would blink, fade in and out as the computers connected and
reconnected with the members’ chips. But gunfire wiped the signal
clean in an instant. Depending on the type of weapon fired and
whether or not the shooting was continuous, the signal could be
lost for a considerable amount of time.

Worrying, Beckett waited in silence.

He didn’t have long to wait. Five
interminable minutes after his last communication with MacDonald,
the expedition’s blips came to life again. They were marching back
in the direction of the
Valor
. Beckett immediately tried to
contact the rumbler, but they were already out of communications
range. Apparently, MacDonald had decided that it was more important
to reach the first expedition rather than to stop and repair
damaged relays. It was a decision for which Beckett could not fault
him. He watched as the two sets of blips closed the gap between
them. Tedesco was in the lead, a little way ahead of Bonamo and
Cummings.

From Rodrigo, there was no signal.

MacDonald’s team consisted of six foot
soldiers, including himself, and one Emergency Medical Technician.
Driving the rumbler was Jennifer Massey. She was a rookie foot
soldier, having gone out on only two missions previously. On both
missions she had substituted for previously injured personnel. She
had yet to see combat. A low key person with a technical mind, she
had chosen infantry over a more technical specialty because she
realized that combat would be her weakness. In a short time,
MacDonald had come to trust her behind the controls like no one
else. But that was all he trusted her for. Of the six under his
command, she was the only one who hadn’t been preselected for this
kind of an operation.

“Time?”

Yamata, sitting next to Massey in the pilot
box, spared a glance at the clock. “We should reach their last
known position in about six minutes.”

MacDonald himself had chosen to sit in the
passenger cabin. Though most expedition leaders chose the pilot
box, MacDonald wanted the ability to leave the rumbler quickly if
need be. For his two cents, he’d have preferred a gunner bucket,
but that would have been foolish.

So far the going was pretty easy. The tall
trees were sparse enough for the rumbler to maneuver between them.
Its tires splashed dirt and mud behind them while grinders placed
underneath and toward the front of the vehicle chewed up the grass
and weeds and sticks and rocks in their path. The squat plants with
the large leaves were ripped up and tossed aside by mechanical
hands. MacDonald had long wondered what would happen if a rumbler
suddenly decided to run amok.

“We’re heading out of communication range,”
reported Yamata.

MacDonald gave no reaction. In the bucket on
his left, Knudson had one eye glued to the scope of a rifle. He
moved it in a regular arc, keeping pace with the motion of the
vehicle. On his right, Alraune did the same. Soames, the EMT,
checked and rechecked her instruments to make sure she was properly
equipped.

At thirteen minutes out, MacDonald felt as
if they had gained some time. “Infrared.”

Yamata made an adjustment. After wading
through all of the smaller wildlife, he reported, “There are three
heat signatures a little over two hundred yards due west.”

Three was not the right number. Not the
distance, nor the size of the group. At that moment, the satellite
feed came back to life and he saw what Beckett saw.

“I have a signal, Mr. MacDonald.”

“From Tedesco?”

Yamata nodded, punching some buttons so that
the feed could be sent to the receiver in the passenger cabin.

“Lieutenant, this is MacDonald. We’re
enroute, by rumbler, to your position. Are you in imminent
danger?”

“Unknown,” Tedesco’s garbled voice returned.
“Maintain readiness.”

After another few moments, the four of them
came into sight. Tedesco was leading, a pistol in her right hand.
Behind her was Bonamo and it was clear that he was bearing the
weight of a man on his shoulders. Finally there was Rodrigo,
covering their backs with her rifle.

Massey pulled the rumbler to a halt in a
position where it would be easy for them to board. MacDonald popped
the hatch for the passenger cabin and leaped out ahead of Soames.
Limping forward, Bonamo deposited Cummings just inside the cabin
and leaned up against the rumbler, panting. Cummings was dead.

“What happened?” MacDonald asked, looking at
Cummings with a cross between bewilderment and frustration. The
other members of the team also stared at Cummings. Some had known
him. Others had not. Each put his or her own face onto the corpse.
Though death was an all too common part of service in the Space
Force, especially for infantry, it wasn’t something men and women
came to accept or even believe in. MacDonald had known Cummings for
years. He’d been a bright and curious man who could make you feel
at ease with a simple turned up corner of the mouth. And now he was
dead, his neck and the front of his armor splashed with blood.

“We were ambushed,” Rodrigo answered,
betraying no emotion whatsoever. “Cummings never knew what hit
him.” There was blood on her neck as well and a piece of her
shoulder armor had been blown away from her right side. That
explained why it was her signal that had been lost rather than
Cummings’. Soames had come over to Rodrigo and had begun inspecting
her wound.

Rodrigo spoke as she was examined, shaking
away Soames’ attempt to look at her left hand. “They came straight
out of the west so that’s where we’ll take our pursuit. Mr.
MacDonald, are we well armed?”

“Yes, Sergeant.” He answered through gritted
teeth.

“Good.”

Tedesco cut in. “We’re not going anywhere
but back to the
Valor
.”