Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(39)

He looks at his data pad again and flicks through a few screens with his finger. “When Indianapolis did its slingshot burn around Mars, were you in armor, Sergeant Grayson?”

“Well, let’s think about this,” I say. “Periapsis approach to a Lanky-held world, right past several Lanky seed ships. Of course I was wearing armor. Everyone was in a vacsuit.”

“Yes or no would be sufficient, Staff Sergeant Grayson.” Special Agent Green looks up from his data pad again and gives me a thin-lipped smile. “Go ahead and assume that you don’t need to impress me with your cleverness or your toughness.”

“I don’t feel the need to impress you,” I say. “I’m just a lowly E-6. You said it yourself. Why are you talking to me right now? We just ran the blockade past Mars. There’s a hundred shipwrecks floating out there. Did the skipper tell you we have thirty thousand people waiting for us to get back to Fomalhaut and show them a way back home?”

“Fomalhaut,” Agent Green says. “Yeah, I read the logs. That’s why you’re sitting here.”

He consults his data pad again. I suppress the sudden urge to rip it out of his hands and cram it down his throat. A hundred of our ships gone, millions dead on Mars, tens of thousands waiting for news on New Svalbard. Why are we wasting time with this right now?

“You took part in a bona fide mutiny on New Svalbard. You disobeyed direct orders from the task force commander and shot it out with fellow troops. I’m still sifting through the details, but from where I’m sitting, I’ve already tallied up twenty-five years in Leavenworth, Staff Sergeant Grayson.”

“They were illegal orders,” I say.

“Not your call to make. You’re an E-6. You’re a combat grunt, not a JAG officer.”

“That was my call to make,” I say. “First thing you learn in NCO school is to never give an order that you know won’t be followed. Second thing you learn is that you have the right to refuse illegal orders. The task force commander had no right to use us to claim civilian assets by force.”

“Be sure to bring that up at your court-martial,” Major Carter says.

“I will,” I say. “And I’ll also bring up how you people exiled two battalions of Earthside grunts on a colony with almost no resources, and then turned off the FTL network.”

Agent Green gives me his brief, thin-lipped smile again. “Two battalions,” he says, aping my tone of voice. “Five thousand troops.”

“And the colonists.”

“And the colonists,” he replies. “How many people live on that frozen ball of shit again?”

“Ten, fifteen thousand,” Major Carter supplies. “It’s a pretty new colony. Ten years tops.”

“Twenty thousand people at the most, then.” Agent Green sighs. “A quarter of them insubordinate rabble-rousers who thought their oath of service was more of a loose suggestion.”

“And three-quarters of them civilians.”

Agent Green sighs again and puts his data pad onto the table in front of him. “Do you know how many civilians have died on Lanky-invaded colonies, Sergeant?”

“I have a rough idea,” I say. “I’ve done four years of combat drops. Seen an awful lot of dead bodies.”

“Eight hundred fifty thousand,” Agent Green says. “Give or take a few ten thousand. And that count was from two months ago. Mars blew it all to hell. Call it twenty, twenty-one million now. But you know what? That number is a weak piss in a lake compared to the number of people that are going to die when the Lankies show up in Earth orbit.”

I look at the Earth bureaucrat with his neat suit underneath the borrowed overalls, with that badge in his pocket and the data pad in front of him, acting like any of this still matters.

“We have a few weeks,” I say. “Maybe a few months. There are a dozen Lanky ships patrolling between Mars and the asteroid belt. When they’re done settling Mars, they’re going to head this way. Way things stand, I don’t think Leavenworth is going to be a problem for me.”

“Well, aren’t you just the toughest guy on the block,” Agent Green says. “I am, of course, duly awed. Where is your berth, Staff Sergeant?”

“I can’t seem to recall just now. Maybe I’ll remember by the time you get me some JAG counsel in here. I don’t think I should be saying anything else right now.”

Agent Green shakes his head, a mildly irritated look on his face. Then he picks up his data pad again and taps the screen.

“Have the master-at-arms find and unlock Staff Sergeant Grayson’s berth. Secure the data module from his armor and report back to the docking collar as soon as complete. And secure the SRA prisoner.”

“He’s not a POW,” I interject. “He’s the liaison for the Alliance task force we joined up with in Fomalhaut. I thought you debriefed the skipper?”

“And I thought you were done talking without JAG counsel,” Agent Green says.

“We need the Russian to get back through the Alliance node for Fomalhaut,” I say. “He has the access code.”

“This ship is going precisely nowhere right now, Sergeant. Once we have untangled the personnel situation, Indianapolis is going to join the defense of Earth. You may have noticed that we’re down a few ships right now.”