"The answer to that is really quite simple," Major Crick said. "We don't expect the ship to stay in one piece. We expect it to be blasted right out of the sky. In fact, we're counting on it."
"Pardon me?" I said. I looked around the table, expecting to see looks of confusion similar to the one I was wearing. Instead, everyone was looking somewhat thoughtful. I found this entirely too disturbing.
"High-orbit insertion, then, is it?" asked Lieutenant Dalton.
"Yes," Crick said. "Modified, obviously."
I gaped. "You've done this before?" I said.
"Not this exactly, Lieutenant Perry," Jane said, drawing my attention to her. "But yes, on occasion we've inserted Special Forces directly from spacecraft—usually when the use of shuttles is not an option, as it would be here. We have special dropsuits to insulate ourselves from the heat of entering the atmosphere; beyond that it's like any normal airdrop."
"Except that in this case, your ship is being shot out from under you," I said.
"That is the new wrinkle here," Jane admitted.
"You people are absolutely insane," I said.
"It makes for an excellent tactic," Major Crick said. "If the ship is torn apart, bodies are an expected part of the debris. The CDF just dropped a skip drone to us with fresh information on the tracking station's location, so we can skip above the planet in a good position to drop our people. The Rraey will think they've destroyed our assault before it happened. They won't even know we're there until we hit them. And then it will be too late."
"Assuming any of you survive the initial strike," I said.
Crick looked over to Jane and nodded. "The CDF has bought us a little wiggle room," Jane said to the group. "They've begun placing skip drives onto shielded missile clusters and tossing them into Coral space. When their shields are struck they launch the missiles, which are very hard for the Rraey to hit. We've gotten several Rraey ships over the last two days this way—now they're waiting a few seconds before they fire in order to accurately track anything that's been thrown at them. We should have anywhere from ten to thirty seconds before the Sparrowhawk is hit. That's not enough time for a ship that's not expecting the hits to do anything, but for us it's enough time to get our people off the ship. It's also maybe enough time for the bridge crew to launch a distracting offensive attack as well."
"The bridge crew is going to stay on the ship for this?" I asked.
"We'll be suited up with the others and operating the ship via BrainPal," Major Crick said. "But we'll be on the ship at least until our first missile volley is away. We don't want to operate Brain-Pals once we leave the ship until we're deep in Coral's atmosphere; it would give away the fact we're alive to any Rraey that might be monitoring. There's some risk involved, but there are risks for everyone who is on this ship. Which brings us, incidentally, to you, Lieutenant Perry."
"Me," I said.
"Quite obviously, you're not going to want to be on the ship when it gets hit," Crick said. "At the same time, you haven't trained for this sort of mission, and we also promised you would be here in an advisory capacity. We can't in good conscience ask for you to participate. After this briefing you'll be provided with a shuttle, and a skip drone will be dispatched back to Phoenix with your shuttle's coordinates and a request for retrieval. Phoenix keeps retrieval ships permanently stationed at skip distance; you should be picked up within a day. We'll leave you a month's worth of supplies, however. And the shuttle is equipped with its own emergency skip drones if it comes to that."
"So you're ditching me," I said.
"It's nothing personal," Crick said. "General Keegan will want to have a briefing on the situation and the negotiations with the Consu, and as our liaison with conventional CDF, you're the best person to do both."
"Sir, with your permission, I'd like to remain," I said.
"We really have no place for you, Lieutenant," Crick said. "You'd serve this mission better back on Phoenix."
"Sir, with all due respect, you have at least one hole in your ranks," I said. "Sergeant Hawking died during our negotiations with the Consu; Private Aquinas is missing half her arm. You won't be able to reinforce your ranks prior to your mission. Now, I'm not Special Forces, but I am a veteran soldier. I am, at the very least, better than nothing."
"I seem to recall you calling us all absolutely insane," Captain Jung said to me.
"You are all absolutely insane," I said. "So if you're going to pull this off you're going to need all the help you can get. Also, sir," I said, turning to Crick, "remember that I lost my people on Coral. I don't feel right about sitting out this fight."
Crick looked over to Dalton. "Where are we with Aquinas?" he asked.
Dalton shrugged. "We have her on an accelerated healing regimen," he said. "It hurts like a bitch to regrow an arm this fast, but she'll be ready when we make the skip. I don't need him."
Crick turned to Jane, who was staring at me. "It's your call, Sagan," Crick said. "Hawking was your noncom. If you want him, you can have him."
"I don't want him," Jane said, looking directly at me as she said it. "But he's right. I'm down a man."
"Fine," Crick said. "Get him up to speed, then." He turned to me. "If Lieutenant Sagan thinks you're not going to cut it, you're getting stuffed in a shuttle. Do you get me?"
"I get you, Major," I said, staring back at Jane.
"Good," he said. "Welcome to Special Forces, Perry. You're the first realborn we've ever had in our ranks, so far as I know. Try not to fuck up, because if you do, I promise you the Rraey are going to be the least of your problems."
Jane entered my stateroom without my permission; she could do that now that she was my superior officer.
"What the fuck do you think you are doing?" she said.
"You people are down a man," I said. "I'm a man. Do the math."
"I got you on this ship because I knew you'd be put on the shuttle," Jane said. "If you were rotated back into the infantry, you'd be on one of the ships involved in the assault. If we don't take the tracking station, you know what's going to happen to those ships and everyone in them. This was the only way I knew I was going to keep you safe, and you just threw it away."
"You could have told Crick you didn't want me," I said. "You heard him. He'd be happy to kick me into a shuttle and leave me floating in Consu space until someone got around to picking me up. You didn't because you know how fucking crazy this little plan is. You know you're going to need all the help you can get. I didn't know it was you I'd be under, you know, Jane. If Aquinas wasn't going to be ready, I could just as easily be serving under Dalton for this mission. I didn't even know Hawking was your noncom until Crick said something about it. All I know was that if this thing is going to work, you need everyone you've got."
"Why do you care?" Jane said. "This isn't your mission. You're not one of us."
"I'm one of you right now, aren't I?" I said. "I'm on this ship. I'm here, thanks to you. And I don't have anywhere else to be. My entire company got blown up and most of my other friends are dead. And anyway, as one of you mentioned, we're all human. Shit, I was even grown in a lab, just like you. This body was, at least. I might as well be one of you. So now I am."
Jane flared. "You have no idea what it's like to be one of us," she said. "You said you wanted to know about me. What part do you want to know? Do you want to know what it's like to wake up one day, your head filled with a library full of information—everything from how to butcher a pig to how to pilot a starship—but not to know your own name? Or that you even have one? Do you want to know what it's like never to have been a child, or even to have seen one until you step foot on some burned-out colony and see a dead one in front of you? Maybe you'd like to hear about how the first time any of us talk to a realborn we have to keep from hitting you because you speak so slow, move so slow and think so fucking slow that we don't know why they even bother to enlist you.