Black Box (14 page)

“But we
have
to go,” Rodrigo cried in
surprise. She seemed as if she were about to say something else,
but her eyes found the rumbler and Massey at the controls…the other
foot soldiers behind her. “We’ll lose the trail if we go back.”
This last, she added more calmly.

But Tedesco was unyielding. “It’s not the
right time.”

“What the hell do you know about the
time
?” Rodrigo seemed on the verge of hysterics now, her
earlier apathy having dissipated like so much mist. “Cummings is
dead.”

“Mind your place, Sergeant.”

Now blood filled Rodrigo’s face and she tore
her arm away from a startled Soames. Marching right up to Tedesco,
she placed both hands on the younger woman’s chest and shoved her
right up against the rumbler. The left hand was blackened and
covered in blood. It left a stain on the lieutenant’s uniform. At a
complete loss, the others simply watched the spectacle.

“Did you hear me, you heartless bitch?
Cummings is dead and it’s your fault!
”

Tedesco was clearly ruffled by the
sergeant’s attack. A brutal retort was just on the tip of her
tongue, but she bit it back. “Rodrigo,” she said in a clipped tone,
but the sergeant cut her off.

“You’d better not say another fucking word,
you bitch,” she said almost levelly.

Tedesco searched for strength and resolve
but found none. “We need to go back to the ship.”

For just a moment, the lieutenant thought
that Rodrigo would simply abandon them and set out on her own, but
they both knew that would be foolish and quite probably jeopardize
the mission. If nothing else, Rodrigo was a good soldier. So,
without another word between them, she grabbed up her rifle and
took a spot in one of the unoccupied gunner’s buckets. Though the
tension in the air remained, the argument had been settled. Bonamo
and Tedesco joined MacDonald and Soames in the passenger cabin.
Once everyone was aboard, Massey brought the rumbler around, its
great arms lifting it and swiveling it almost on the spot. As they
moved down the fresh made path toward the
Valor
, Rodrigo
couldn’t help but look back toward the battle site…

…and curse the circumstances that had
brought them to this.

At what point does man’s arrogance collide
with his ignorance? Gil, Jude, and Danielle are all dead. For all
of the tests we ran and all of the readings we took, our efforts
were worthless. Which plants are poisonous? Which animals are
dangerous? What does all of that mean when laser beams come slicing
out of the trees and cut your friends to ribbons?

LASER BEAMS!

Danielle was first, which was ironic because
she was the one who heard it, that first rumble nearby in the
jungle. We had just started to relax again when she stopped,
pricked up her ears and smiled her coy little smile, that little
nervous turn of her lips. At first we thought it was an insect, a
single hum that cut across the jungle. I smiled back and was still
smiling when the top half of her head slid off of the bottom
half.

We were all so shocked. I mean, how could we
expect this? Was this first contact? An ambush? We weren’t even
armed! Before we could raise our arms in surrender, the enemy
burned a hole the size of a golf ball into Gil’s chest. Jude
panicked. How could he not? He took off and I took off after him. I
knew I had to stay with him. I knew we needed to be together. But
then there was a crack like a blast of thunder and he flew back
into me, knocking me sideways and splattering me with his blood.
Toppling into one of the giant ferns, I barely caught a glimpse of
a lithe figure coming to inspect its kill. It seemed satisfied at
having killed Jude and then turned to me. I tried to look at it,
but it was bathed in shadows and my vision was spotted with tears
and Jude’s blood. I could see that it was humanoid. By my
standards, it was in better shape than anyone I knew. I thought
sure it was the end of me, but it decided not to finish the job.
Instead, it disappeared again into the foliage.

I don’t know how long I lay there. I was
frozen in shock. All I could think of was that my friends were dead
and, just maybe it didn’t need to be that way. If we hadn’t ignored
the first sound, it might have turned out differently. Maybe.
Finally, I pulled myself from the ground, stumbled over to where
Jude lay, and made sure that he was dead. Then I hoisted his stiff
and sticky corpse onto my shoulder and carried him back to the
ship.

It’s dark now. So dark. At first light, I’ll
go out. I’ll be taking Geoff Markakis and Roger Rhodes. I’ll be
taking guns. We’ll go out and bring back Danielle and Gil. Then
we’ll get the hell out of here. We’ll leave this horrible place
behind.

This perfect planet…

Colonel Nicholas Walker

March 27
^th
,
2056

Tedesco’s report was uninspiring. Beckett
hadn’t truly expected anything particularly insightful from the
young officer, but her report was really, really bland. She
reported their movements almost to the breath. Listening to it was
agonizing. Truly. And most of it was worthless. Only at the time
she split the two groups did it become relevant. According to her
report, she gave the order on Sergeant Rodrigo’s recommendation.
They had detected something moving through the jungle and
determined that it was not an animal, at least not a small one and
not something they had previously seen. Short minutes of following
the sounds convinced Rodrigo that the movements were carefully
planned and certainly not the movements of an animal. In an effort
to flank whoever or whatever it was, Cummings and the sergeant
moved left and were to come around at a wide angle while Tedesco
and Bonamo pressed on ahead. If things had gone according to plan,
they would have come upon their target simultaneously. But there
were gunshots. Tedesco and Bonamo were forced to take cover until
the shooting stopped, then rushed to Rodrigo’s position. Cummings
was already dead. Rodrigo was sitting beside him, her rifle on the
ground next to her.

Beckett sat in the conference room with only
Crew Chief Hardy as his company, the report droning on and on. He
was tempted to forward through it, but that would have been
unprofessional.

Hardy yawned.

There was one discrepancy between Tedesco’s
report and Rodrigo’s. That was actually a pleasant surprise. In his
tenure as captain, Beckett had found that reports tended to wander
through the facts like a game of telephone. Especially when one or
more deaths was involved. Then you have people trying to cover
themselves in case someone should be deemed responsible. Rodrigo
failed to mention that it was her recommendation that the group
split up. It may not have been, but Beckett guessed it was. Tedesco
was not the lying type and Rodrigo leaving that out made for
omission, not falsehood. Either way, he didn’t care. He had given
Tedesco command of the expedition and, therefore, responsibility
for all decisions.

Rodrigo’s report was important because she
had been with Cummings when he’d been killed. She was the only
witness. Surprisingly, her report was concise. After years of
serving with the sergeant, both as her subordinate and superior, he
had listened to dozens of her reports in dozens of different
circumstances. The common thread in Anabelle’s reports was always
her side commentary. And the profanity. In fact, there wasn’t even
one recorded report by Anabelle Rodrigo that wasn’t edited and
annotated to mark the changes. Beckett had always found this
amusing, largely because it pissed off the
Admiralty
.
Especially Admiral James, who was too mean to even be called a
bastard. This report, though, had none of that. Both Beckett and
Hardy had expected to be entertained by a regaling of Tedesco’s
inexperience and incompetence, but all they got were the facts. And
it got worse after they split. Cummings had always been a favorite
target of Rodrigo’s commentary. But now, maybe out of respect for
the dead, she kept to the events as they happened.

A laser blast had come from the trees,
whizzed past her and taken Cummings full in the chest. He’d never
had a chance. Rodrigo immediately dived for cover and was hit in
the shoulder. She’d have been killed if she’d stayed put. Reacting
with her usual instinct, the sergeant had unleashed a volley of
fire into the trees. She did not panic. She did not fire wildly.
After her first shots she moved for cover, listening for other
signs of movement. She tried to approach the sniper’s position, but
couldn’t be sure if she had found it. She fired again, two more
volleys, just to let her enemy know that she was prepared, but
there was no result. Whoever had killed Cummings had gotten away.
When it was over, she had returned to him and waited for Bonamo and
Tedesco to arrive.

“Did she write that report or the brat?”
Hardy commented when the play ended. The brat was Tedesco and
Beckett declined comment. With his index finger, he touched the
icon for Bonamo’s report and began that playback.

Bonamo’s report did not conflict with
Tedesco’s report on any points. There was, however, one curiosity.
Whereas Tedesco reported hearing gunshots, Bonamo was very specific
about the shots they heard. He first reported hearing Cummings fire
his weapon. That, in and of itself, couldn’t be possible because
Rodrigo had reported that Cummings had been killed by a laser beam
and only she had fired. And, speaking of the laser beams, Bonamo
reported hearing them as well. He thought there had been three, but
he wasn’t entirely sure. They were a whining buzz in his ears.
Sergeant Rodrigo’s shots had come last, three volleys of rifle
fire. He was so specific and the tone of his voice in the recording
was so confident that Beckett had no choice but to give it merit.
Hardy caught it as well, but said nothing.

“Let’s start with Tedesco,” Beckett
suggested.

But Tedesco was no help. She stuck to her
report, almost word for word, and was very careful not to get under
the captain’s skin. Though she certainly understood that a beam
weapon of some kind had killed Cummings, she didn’t hear it when it
was fired. The only shots she heard were from ballistic weapons,
presumably Rodrigo’s weapon. To the captain and the crew chief,
that meant that there could have been shots before the laser fire
and after. They could have been Rodrigo’s shots or Cummings’
shots.

“Bonamo’s the key,” Beckett said. “How can
he be so sure Cummings fired first?”

“I say we leave him for last. Let’s get
Rodrigo in here and see if we can’t get her to slip up.”

Beckett did not like the idea of trying to
trick Rodrigo. They had been friends and colleagues for too long.
He trusted her like he trusted no one else. If she was lying, there
was a good reason for it, probably one with which he would agree.
In fact, he was sure that if there was something to hide, she
wouldn’t be hiding it from him.

He shook his head. “Bonamo. I want the facts
first.”

Kenneth Bonamo arrived in the conference
room looking very nervous. His father had been a service man and
the best advice he had ever given his son was that if he wanted to
get promoted, he should stay the hell out of the way. Of course,
Ken Bonamo, Sr. had never made it past sergeant in a forty three
year career.

Captain Beckett was there in his usual seat
by the front door. There was a recorder on the table at his left.
Chief Hardy was also there, his sour expression unchanged. Bonamo
couldn’t remember exchanging even two words with the crew chief in
his six months on
Valor.
No one liked him. Everyone was
afraid of him. It was as if he could see right through you with
those angry little eyes of his. When he had first come on board,
Bonamo had seen him in the oddest places at the oddest times. After
a month of service, he had gotten an uncharacteristic leave due to
the ship’s assignment schedule. He had gone to a restaurant with
his mother and there was the crew chief, at a table all by himself,
his eyes unashamedly on the two of them.

“Try to relax, Mr. Bonamo. It’s a standard
review of your report.”

“Yes, sir.” Bonamo swallowed hard, feeling
sand in his throat. As far as he knew, there was no such thing as a
standard review of a report. Reports were recorded and filed.
Interviews were conducted only when reports were deemed suspect.
“Sir?”

Beckett looked up from the computer screen.
Hardy remained motionless.

“Can I have some water, sir?”

Beckett looked up. “What?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” His voice cracked. “I’m a
little dry.”

Beckett looked around the room. There wasn’t
any drinking water to be had. Taps were frequent on board ship.
There was even a tap in the Control Room for officers that had to
work overtime. But here, there was nothing.

“Can it wait? This won’t take long.”

“Oh.” Bonamo shifted in his seat. “Well I
have some with me, if that’s what you mean, sir.” He pulled out a
tiny metal flask.

Hardy leaned forward. “Are you sure that’s
just water, boy?”

Almost reluctantly, Bonamo took notice of
the Crew Chief. “Um, yes, sir, it is. Would you like to…”

“That’s fine, Mr. Bonamo.” Beckett was
starting to lose his patience. “Help yourself.”

“Thank you, sir.” Unscrewing the little cap,
the young soldier took a long pull, replaced the cap, and put the
flask back into his pocket. “Do you need me to recite the report,
sir?”

Beckett shook his head. “I just want to
clear up some inconsistencies.”

“Inconsistencies, sir?”

Beckett ignored the question. “Between the
times when you split up and when you reunited with Sergeant
Rodrigo, did you have the sergeant and Mr. Cummings in sight at any
time?”