“We might not have much choice,” Geary said. He glanced at Desjani. Her rigid face showed no feeling even though he could see anguish in her eyes. But she nodded in response to his unspoken question.
“You’re right, Admiral,” Desjani said. “Let’s see what Gunny Orvis can do first, though.”
“I’m on my way to that bridge hatch,” Orvis reported, jumping up and pulling himself into the temporary air lock rigged from sheets of thin, transparent material that ballooned outward under even the gentle pressure still inside the ship. “Maya, I want your breaking and entering guy there along with half your squad. Don’t do anything until I get there. From the sound of things, we can’t afford to use a Banshee without risking serious harm to the fleet officers.”
“Figures,” Corporal Maya grumbled. “Jaworski, get your butt down here with me. The rest of you apes hold positions.”
Orvis scrambled through the craft until he reached the hatch where Maya and her Marines waited. “Have you tried knocking? Did you push any buttons?”
“No, Gunny,” Maya replied. “You said not to do anything.”
“And you listened? You may make sergeant someday.” Orvis walked to the bulkhead holding the hatch, examining it carefully. “I never saw one just like this. It does look armored, though. Let’s see who’s home before we blow the door down.”
Orvis reached out a hand, one armored finger gently touching a comm panel next to the hatch. “That ought to be the call button, right?”
His question was answered a moment later when the comm panel lit up, showing a man brandishing a hand weapon, his face twisted by fear. “I’ve got them in here! You break in and I’ll kill them both!”
“Martian,” Commander Nkosi said, disgust clear in his voice. “That tattoo under his left ear. It’s a gang mark. Red mobs use them.”
“Hey,” Gunnery Sergeant Orvis said to the criminal in soothing tones very unlike his usual way of speaking. “Relax. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah. Yeah. You break in and I’ll kill them!”
“Understood. We don’t want you. We just want those two officers.”
“It’s not my fault we’re down here!” the hostage-taker cried, his words falling over each other as they came out too quickly and too loudly. “It was Grassie! She took us down before the rest of us knew she was aiming to land on Europa! It wasn’t my fault!”
“Pal, I don’t care whose fault it was, I just want our people back safe,” Orvis assured him. “We’ll let the locals worry about what to do to this Grassie.”
The man laughed, high-pitched and rapid, the sound unnerving. “We already took care of her! Shoved her out the air lock while she tried to claim she had some plan to get us out of here! It’s all her fault; she wanted to be on Europa, so we gave her to Europa!”
That explained the body outside the ship. “Idiots,” Desjani said in disgusted tones. “They panicked and killed their pilot.”
“They would have had a backup pilot aboard,” Commander Nkosi said. “Or, at least, an autopilot routine so the ship could fly itself. But it was still a very stupid as well as brutal thing to do.”
Gunnery Sergeant Orvis was speaking to the hostage-taker again, still using the same calm, measured tones. “All right. You took care of your pilot. So we got no problems.”
“No… no problems?” The criminal sounded bewildered as well as frightened.
“That’s right. You the only one in there with our people? What do you need?”
“What?” The criminal stared at Orvis.
“What do you need? You and me, we’re just doing our jobs, right? Now, me, my job is to get those officers safe and sound. That’s what I want. What do you want? You want a deal?”
“A deal?” The hostage-taker grasped at that like a man in a vacuum grabbing for a survival suit. “Yeah. A deal. I’ll trade you those two.”
“That’s fair,” Orvis said. “Trade them for what? What’s the deal?”
“Uh… get me off this rock! That’s the deal! You promise to get me off here along with you, then you let me go, safe, or I kill both of your friends!”
Orvis handed his rifle to a nearby Marine, then held his empty hands up in a nonthreatening way. “That’s it? That’s all you want?”
“Yeah! Promise you’ll get me safe off Europa! In one piece!”
“Sure,” Orvis replied. “We don’t care what happens to you. You got a deal.”
“I’ve got… ? That’s it? You don’t have to check with anybody?”
“Hell, no. I got full authority for this,” Orvis assured him. “You let us in there, we get those two officers safe and sound, and we’ll do what you ask.”
Commander Nkosi turned an angry gaze on Geary. “Admiral, you can’t—”
Geary shook his head, his grim expression stopping Nkosi’s words in their tracks. He felt a sickness inside as he realized what Gunny Orvis intended, but no orders reached his lips to stop what would soon happen. I need to own this, too. I knew it might come to this. It’s my responsibility. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” he told Nkosi.
“He doesn’t,” Desjani said. She didn’t sound upset, just implacable. Geary wondered how many times she had faced similar situations and made similar decisions.
The traitor who had provided a Syndic hypernet key to the Alliance, and who had led the Alliance fleet into an ambush that might have been the death of that entire fleet, had died on this bridge. No one had ever told Geary who had pulled the trigger. But whether or not Tanya herself had executed the man, he realized that she could have.
A child of an endless war, she did what was necessary.
“But your man is promising—” Nkosi began again.
“We were at war for a century with opponents who would lie at the drop of a hat and commit any atrocity,” Desjani interrupted. “We learned to do what we have to do.”
Nkosi stared at her. “But… your own honor—”
“Don’t,” Desjani said in her most dangerous voice. “Don’t go there. You have no right to judge us.”
Nkosi looked away, clearly distressed, but he said nothing more.
“You promise? That’s binding?” the hostage-taker was demanding once more.
“Yeah, I promise,” Orvis said in a casual voice. “Yeah, it’s binding.” Unseen by the hostage-taker, but visible to Geary and the other watchers who could see activity on Orvis’s helmet display, Orvis tagged the image of the criminal, then highlighted Corporal Maya’s name. Almost instantly, Maya’s acknowledgment glowed green on Orvis’s display.
“Look,” Orvis pressed, “you’ve only got so much life support left, and the longer any of us hang around this ice ball, the more risk we’re all running. Let’s get this done, all right?”
The hostage-taker hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Remember. You promised. I got a record of it.”
“That’s fine. I got a record of it, too.”
A low thunk sounded as the bolts holding the hatch retracted, then the hatch swung open. Atmosphere puffed out as pressure inside the bridge equalized with what was left inside the rest of the spacecraft. Orvis entered slowly, still unarmed, his hands once again held out as far as they could be and get through the hatch. A few other Marines followed behind him, their weapons pointed toward the deck or the overhead, everyone moving in a relaxed way. Last of all came Corporal Maya, her weapon pointed slightly away from the hostage-taker.
The criminal obviously still didn’t trust the Marines. He had the pistol barrel pressed against Lieutenant Castries’s forehead. Castries was dressed in a shapeless coverall and propped into a seat. Her eyes were closed and her body slack.
“Drugged,” Dr. Nasr told Geary. “If she were merely unconscious, her respiration would be more rapid.”