Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(70)

Dmitry and I walk down the ramp and onto solid ground for the first time in almost a month. I suppress the urge to kneel down and kiss the frigid concrete, which would probably cost me my lips. Dmitry shoulders his kit bag and nods at me.

“Good luck, Andrew. I do not think I will see you again.”

I hold out my good hand, and he shakes it firmly.

“Good luck, Dmitry,” I say. “See you on the battlefield some day. Hopefully on the same side.”

“Is not likely. But I will not forget what you did. You come defect to Alliance, I put in good word for you. Maybe even make you senior sergeant.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do svidaniya,” he says. Then he turns to walk toward the waiting Akula parked across the landing pad.



There’s plenty of activity on the airfield, but I don’t see any familiar faces here to meet me. I walk into the control building and down to the access tunnel that leads to the Ellipse, a kilometer and a half away, and start walking, grateful for the solitude and the opportunity to stretch my legs.

The Ellipse is as busy as it was when I left New Longyearbyen a month ago. Civilian ice miners and their families are mingling with soldiers in Homeworld Defense uniforms and the occasional Spaceborne Infantry smock. There’s music coming from some of the vendor stalls, and I can smell fried food in the air down here, a scent that makes my stomach lurch. Food vendors down here either mean that the supply situation isn’t desperate yet, or the official supply is bad enough to spur black-market demand. I know a thing or two about economics in a shortage zone from my formative years trading stolen shit in the PRC back home.

I make my way through the foot traffic, feeling vaguely out of place in my bulky hardshell battle armor, and head for the admin center, which is naturally almost at the opposite end of the Ellipse from the terminus of the airfield access tunnel.

Chief Constable Guest’s office is one of the first rooms beyond the entry vestibule of the admin center. The door is open, and when I peek inside, the constable is behind his desk. He has his humongous boots propped up on the desk, and there’s a data pad on his lap. He sees me in the doorway and does a little double take.

“How do you even get boots in that size?” I ask. “I swear, I’ve seen armored vehicles with narrower tracks.”

“Special order. Takes six months to get a pair from Earth. Well, used to, anyway.” Constable Guest puts down his data pad and swings his legs off the desktop. Then he gets out of his chair and comes over to the door.

“Good to see you back,” he says. “I knew Indy was entering orbit, but I figured it’d be another three or four hours before they send a drop ship down.” He looks at my bandaged hand and raises an eyebrow. “That doesn’t look too good.”

“It’s not great,” I say. “I’ll have to take my boots off in the future whenever I have to count to ten.”

“See a doc about that yet?”

“We sort of had to leave Gateway in a hurry. I’ve had the corpsman on Indy look at it.”

“You still need to go and have one of our docs fix you up. The clinic is down here on the ground floor, at the end of Hallway C and to the right.”

“I’ll go see ’em soon enough,” I say. “No hurry. Fingers are gone, no going back on that. Have you seen Sergeant Fallon around?” I ask, partially to change the subject.

Constable Guest scratches the top of his head. “Check the ops center. If she’s not there, she’s probably either up in the science section with Dr. Stewart, or over at On the Rocks. Also with Dr. Stewart.”

“What is Master Sergeant Fallon doing with the head of your science mission? Is she getting some schooling in astrophysics?”

Constable Guest smiles and shakes his head. “I think their mutual interests are more in the field of chemistry. Distillation, to be specific.”



I leave my armor in a corner of Constable Guest’s office next to the rack holding his well-worn M-66 carbine in its DNA-locked safety clamp. Then I walk over to the ops center and stick my head into the room, but it’s mostly empty except for three civvies and two troopers in HD uniforms I don’t know. Dr. Stewart’s office in the science section is empty as well except for an impressive amount of clutter on her desk that looks like a scientific experiment on the limits of static design. I jog down the staircase to the underground passage into the Ellipse, eager to catch up with my friend and former squad leader.

On the Rocks is noisy and a bit raucous. There are tables and chairs on the outside of the bar taking up space on the Ellipse, and people are drinking and talking out here at a volume that can be heard fifty meters beyond the nearest bend. I make my way through the little maze of tables and walk into the bar, which is packed to the last table. The people here are mostly civilian workers. A few of the tables have soldiers sitting at them, most in Homeworld Defense uniforms. The soldier and civvie tables are segregated except for one table in the corner of the room. Sergeant Fallon sits with her back to the wall, facing the door, engrossed in conversation with Dr. Stewart. I walk up to the table, and she looks up when she notices my presence.

“Andrew,” she says. Then she gets up from her chair and gives me a fierce one-armed hug that squeezes the air out of my lungs. “I am ridiculously glad that you aren’t dead.”