Dry, No Lube Ch. 02: Pixy's Choice

"No. We're very fucked here." When it came down to it, her job was simple: gravity would do a lot of it. She'd just need to select an entry angle and then flare to land when the time came. Amisuul would have to handle the deception plan, buried at the bottom of the manual chart, a coordinated dance involving decoy drones, chaff, smoke-vapor masking, and more chaff on the way down, to confuse whatever detectors the Flasbards would use. "Dry, no lube."

"What's this really about, ma'am?" The Tygon frowned as he went back through the sequences. "It ain't terraforming."

"Wetwork." Pixy had given it a lot of thought since the Army had come aboard, and it was all she could come up with. Wetwork: assassination. Skullduggery. Hitmen, doing hitman stuff. "Those two guys who came with the weirdo Linder captain? They're wetboys."

"No shit."

"Fully shit. Ana sold them eleven ounces of Rush last night. Well, that is, the Linder came and bought it all. Didn't even haggle." She shrugged. "According to all the books I've read, assassins need a lot of drugs."

"Do they."

"You know, for all the... like, the emotional numbing? Plus they have to focus."

Amisuul was not into drugs, but he was no idiot either. "Eleven ounces..."

"That's an awful fucking lot," Pixy promised him. Ana's shocked report on the sale had gotten her thinking. "They're poisoning something? Disrupting the Flasbard water supply? Planting drugs on some Flasbard administrator?"

"Fuck, Pixy! You don't know! They could just be getting completely wasted and having an epic night on the town!" He was staring at her, those big golden Tygon eyes shining. "I'm not sure I like what you've gotten me into."

"Neither do I." She reached absently over and elbowed him hard in the belly. "Don't call me Pixy, you little shit."

* * *

Only now, as the Pulver's big clamshell doors at last slid past in the viewport, was she finally able to turn off her mind and quit worrying. This had happened before, back during the Battle, when she'd nearly shit herself in fright when she had time to let her mind dwell on what was actually happening, or about to happen. Then it actually had happened, and she'd felt nothing but cold, grim precision; Pixy hadn't known, before that day, that she was capable of making life-and-death decisions so quickly.

She was scanning constantly, taking the bearings off the fixed stars against the stenciled markings on the viewport glass, forcing down the zero-gravity nausea as the Pulver swung crazily away; she focused hard on the mechanics of flying until the mid-beam crackled in her ear. "Blue Point," said Filbric's voice. "Safe trip, ma'am."

"Thanks," she bit out, still preoccupied with the calculations for orbital injection. "Gravity, Amisuul," she rapped out, and the Tygon sounded the warning for the infantrymen back on the crew deck before counting to five and throwing the levers. Better; she felt her food settle back against her intestines as the grav returned, set at a relatively airy E-2.7 to simulate the Flasbard moon's surface.

"Gravity is marginal for dismounted humans," Cooper had explained during his briefing, "so we're going to be doing our mission objectives with the Linder squad, backed up by the humans and one of the weapons sections. Tygons, you're back with the shuttle to secure the LZ."

That's the way the P/E guys did things, Pixy had learned: three squads, tailored to the gravity of whatever planet they were landing on, with the least suitable soldiers staying back as security. But most of the platoon would be leaving them, moving toward the objective about six kilometers from the projected landing zone with the two jittery "terraformers" in tow. The weird Linder Captain Nyhre was staying aboard the Pulver for "plausible deniability," so Pixy and Amisuul would be the only officers with the shuttle on the surface.

Not that that mattered; Cooper had left them in no doubt that they had no place in the chain of command. "This is an Army operation, ma'am," he'd stressed several times. "Sergeant-major Kong will be in command at the LZ, with Zyllewry and his high-grav squad. One weapons section, the forward observer, and the assistant medic back with the shuttle. Sergeant Fraze to handle space-based comms. That's it; everyone else moves out."

So it was a tense, heavily-armed pack of soldiers she'd seen cram themselves into the troop bay, already loaded for bear and prepared to deploy as soon as she cleared away the hatches.

Until then? High-atmosphere physics, the ironclad laws of nature gripping hard against the skin of the shuttle and all the creatures inside, and Pixy had nothing to think about but the challenges of orbital insertion. That, and avoiding collisions; the Flasbards had not been shy about putting satellites into orbit, all of them twinkling benignly out in space. Beyond them she caught one last sight of Pulver before Captain Reye took the ship transparent, with the two frigates already heading for the planet's dayside for their decoy bombardment.

The idea, taken from P/E doctrine, was to insert the shuttle right at the planet's terminator, the line that ran across the surface separating night from day. You did your upper-atmosphere entry on the dayside, where nobody would see the fiery trail in the sky, then smacked into the atmosphere at the moment night fell for a nice, stealthy landing and plenty of darkness for wetwork. It required good timing from the pilot and a precise juggling of the shuttle's mass, and Pixy stayed busy with her abacus as the planet loomed closer and closer.

Dimly she was aware of noise, rhythmic, pounding noise, drifting up from the crew bay. Amisuul, crammed into a copilot's seat that Woj had clearly never needed, glanced back. "The fuck is all that?"

"Chanting." Pixy frowned at the controls. "They're motivating themselves. Mottos, songs... Army people do that sometimes."

"They're stomping, too..."

"They're about to do a secret landing on an enemy planet, then escort some assassins in to do assassin shit, then try to lift without being discovered." She spared a glance backward. "A little stomping and yelling is the least they should be doing." She messed with the mixture on the Furtz generator. "As long as they don't stomp enough to affect my trim characteristics, they can do whatever the fuck they want." The shuttle was coming in shallower as it burned fuel, requiring constant attention. "The frigates should be starting to bomb when? At 1315, I think?"

"Shit, I don't know."

Pixy rolled her eyes. "I'll bet Sergeant Fraze actually stayed awake during the mission brief, you useless fucking shitbag. Go ask him. I'm not supposed to start my dive until the bombardment goes." The Tygon flashed her a black look as he made his way toward the flight-deck hatch, and Pixy was left to shake her head at the stupidity of the people around her.

The shuttle mass gauge trembled, the abacus clacked, and the flames of the ablative heat shield began to flicker as the shuttle lost altitude. She was just starting to worry as her mid-beam crackled: Filbric, speaking from another world. "Frigates are bombing, ma'am."

"Roger." And, on schedule, there it was: the terminator, inching toward them along the bland greenish planetary surface, a line of inexorable blackness where the local sun ran out of curvature. Pixy rang the reentry alarm, figuring that would at least bring Amisuul back up the ladder, and did the last of her calculations. "Right on the curve," she told herself, and then the worry melted away again as the shuttle speared toward the enemy moon, underneath the satellites now, the atmospheric envelope slowly swallowing up the smaller stars as the pressure built against the heatshield.

* * *

"So, we're not sure who they're killing?" Amisuul was still confused, but Sergeant-major Kong was in the mood to be polite to the young Fleet officer.

"We never really do, on these jobs," the old man shrugged. "Sometimes we land, do the placement, reach the objective, and find nobody there, or maybe just a family or something." He shrugged. "I was on a hit team once, that was supposed to strike a regional Antarean defense minister? Housing minister? Who cares. Anyway, this was back in '96 or '97, and all we found was a houseful of slaves and pets, plus the minister's husband." Kong frowned, then laid down another card.

Amisuul glanced across at Pixy, who had unwillingly agreed to make up the whist pair. She was a shitty player, but whist was the Federation's favorite military game and being able to play was not optional. "What'd you do?" the Tygon asked; Fraze, who'd clearly heard the story before, stayed silent at his end of the little fold-out table. Pixy knew what was coming.

"We killed them all," Kong shrugged. "That's what you do. No traces."

Off to the side, Nitz the assistant medic and Sergeant Lim the forward observer were curled up in the corner trying to sleep. The two had just treated the rest of the shuttle to a highly uncomfortable demonstration of public sex, which the Army people had ignored. "They always do that," Fraze had shrugged as Lim thrust merrily into Nitz from behind. "Missions make them horny."

"It's not a problem, provided they do it before anything is likely to go south," Kong explained, gazing critically at Lim's form. "It never takes them very long." Sure enough, the two of them had arched and moaned almost on cue, with Lim gripping hard at Nitz' hips as he unloaded. "Shorter than usual," was the sergeant-major's grunted commentary as he left to deliver some water to the weapons-squad guys outside.

The hatch was open to let in the gentle night breeze, as well as Zyllewry's occasional status reports: they were always the same. Nobody in this ragged little corner of this tiny little moon knew the shuttle was there. Pixy checked her chronograph. "They should be hitting the objective soon," she pointed out nervously. Kong caught the tone in her voice.

"Don't worry, ma'am. They'll be back on time. Cooper's a pretty good LT; he'll keep them on schedule." The plan was simple: whoever needed killing or drugging or implicating would be killed, drugged, or implicated; Cooper's group would make its way back over the plain; and at dawn they'd troop back aboard, Pixy would do the pop lift, and off they'd fly. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, the frigates would move to cover the withdrawal. "Easy money."

Pixy just stared at him a moment, then threw down another card. "Small slam," she announced quietly, and the Army pair merely rolled their eyes.

"Dude. Fuck this." Fraze got up with a creaking in his knees. "I'm hitting the rack. Ain't shit going to happen before morning, anyway. Can someone mind the low-beam?"

"I'll do it." Pixy was not going to get any sleep at all. She was very uneasy, as she often was planetside; it had been many months, she realized suddenly, since she'd walked on dirt. She gazed thoughtfully at the open hatch, wondering whether she should bother now, but then she realized there was no point.

She was happier aboard the shuttle.

The bouncy gravity here made it easy to climb the ladder to the flight deck, where she sat with her feet on the instrument panel and the inky night pressing in from the other side of the viewport.

* * *

But she did go to sleep, for the alert chime jolted her awake with the night continuing to pass outside. "Shuttle, Cooper, over." The low-beam was a hushed whisper, and for a moment Pixy was completely confused.

"What?" The low-beam strength meter glowed on the panel, the only light anywhere. "I mean, Cooper, this is shuttle, over."

A burst of static assaulted her ears; she stared at the strength meter, blinking, her days as a commo officer long past. Was she supposed to tune the meter? Angle the subspace beam antenna? Or was it a problem at Cooper's end? "Cooper, shuttle, over."

"...not sure what's going on now. We're starting back now, over."

Pixy yawned herself back to full consciousness. "Say again all before 'not sure,' over."

The low-beam stayed silent for a long while, and when it spoke again it wasn't Cooper's voice. "Things are weird here. We're moving out. Mission accomplished, but we're heading back in a hurry, over."

"Copy." The fuck? "Call in once you hit your checkpoints," she stuttered back; she was aware there were progress updates that Sergeant-major Kong was supposed to track. "Hurry back, over."

"Roger. We're leaving in --" Cut. No static, no error tone, nothing, just a solid wall of silence in her ears. Pixy looked out the viewport in the direction of the objective, instinct telling her there were problems on that black horizon, and a sudden flickering glow appearing from the rim of the planet told her she was right.

"Fuck." She slapped the alert button, sending a brief warning chime through the entire shuttle, and then she slid over to the copilot's seat to check the proximity detectors.

Nothing.

Heads appeared at the top of the ladder. "Ma'am?"

"Fraze? Status update for the Pulver: mission accomplished. Let them know. We're still on schedule, but they're heading back now." Pixy jammed her fingers into her eyes, banishing the last of the sleep while the shuttle vibrated to the low, excited voices from back in the crew bay.

"Full alert." That was Kong, his loud old voice chopping through the confusion. "Sergeant Zyllewry, 100% wakeup. I'll come out in a second to reposition the weapons guys." His voice grew louder as he climbed the ladder. "Ma'am? Lieutenant Pfeiffer?"

"Sergeant-major? I got a call from Cooper. He says mission accomplished..."

"Yeah, fuck that, ma'am. See that glow out there toward the objective?" He appeared on the flight deck and leaned down to point out the viewport in a sudden odor of stim. "The mission's not our concern anymore. Now it's about extraction. That glow means we're fucked."

The fear started with her legs, bouncing uncontrollably under the console. "What do we do?"

"You just sit here and look pretty, ma'am," he growled. "I'll send your little Tygon buttboy up here if I can get his ass awake. Then Sergeant Lim will come up to the turret to figure out fire control; he'll be using the shuttle guns to cover the LT's retreat. They'll be heading back in a big hurry." He sniffed. "Thank Musk for a low-G planet," he finished, his voice hard and cruel. "I'm off to organize those motherfuckers outside." He spun without waiting for a response, and the hatch shuffled closed behind him.

In the event, Lim beat Amisuul up the ladder. "Hi, ma'am." Lim had a shy and diffident manner at odds with the display he'd put on down below while fucking Nitz. "Don't mind me. I'll be shooting from the turret."

"Whatever." Pixy had no idea what to do, and she did not mind who knew it. She was petrified, knowing she wasn't in charge and feeling powerless as a consequence. "You do what you do." The turret ladder rattled behind her as the sergeant climbed in the dim light of the flight deck; by now the proximity detector was adding its light to the strength meter. Both were empty. She heard loud, military clicking and clanking from outside; she could peer down from the viewport and just barely catch starlight on metal as the Tygon squad redeployed to react to the glowing horizon, now steadily brighter and vaguely greenish.

"What's that?" Amisuul sounded hushed. "You're in my seat, Pixy."

"That's trouble." She swapped to her own seat. "And don't call me Pixy. I guess Cooper's guys did their... their terraforming," she snarled, "but something's shit the bed out there. I'm not sure what's going on, but make sure you know those FPF procedures just in case."

"What's to know?" He shrugged and sat, automatically strapping on his harness. "Either Cooper or Mozz orders the FPF, and I press the green button. Then you launch once the weight is relieved." He shrugged. "Codeword is 'Shitfuck.' Did I forget anything?"

She frowned. "Guess not." She looked up briefly at where the soles of Lim's boots dangled from the turret. "Keep an eye on the proximity detector. They'll be coming from the east." Five kilometers; that would be more than half an hour even with the reduced gravity, and the infantrymen would be gassed once they arrived. "Set it for minimum range; that's the only way we'll be able to pick up anything as small as a human."

"Small?" Amisuul was staring at the display. "I'm already picking up something big."

"No shit?" Even as Pixy leaned over, the intertube crackled.

"Uh, sergeant-major?" Lim sounded uncertain. "I've got a long-range visual on... hell, I don't know." He paused. "A lot of... stuff, out there on the plain?"

"Put it on my repeater," Kong snapped back, the wind audible behind his words. He had a portable repeater on his chest.

"It's a big fucking group of something," Amisuul said softly, tuning the proximity detector.

"It's a big mass of fucking Flasbards," Lim said at the same moment.

"Chasing the LT," Kong concluded grimly over the tube. "They're screwed."

"East, ma'am, right?" Amisuul sounded concerned. "You said the contacts would be coming from the east?"

Pixy's heart sank even before she leaned over the check the detector. Amisuul was an idiot, but he surely knew east from west. "Why?"

"Uhh..." He pointed at the display and stared back across at Pixy with his eyes and mouth wide. "North, ma'am."

Pixy was calling up to Lim without bothering to look at the panel. Off on the other horizon, the glow was no longer a sickly green; dawn was coming, too. "Sergeant, check north. What do you see?"

"North?"

"North, dammit." Pixy was rapidly becoming convinced her life was about to end, and she'd noticed before that that tended to make her decisive. "What do you see?"

Nothing, apparently, for a long minute; then, in a sickly and tentative voice, Lim said, "Dust, ma'am. Clouds of it."

Pixy slapped the intertube monitor. "Contacts north, sergeant-major. Lots of them."

The reply came snapping back, infantry-cold. "Ain't nothing I can do about it. We're not moving until we get our guys aboard."

Pixy scowled. "Closure rate on those northern contacts, Mr Amisuul?"

The Tygon was squinting at his scope. It lacked any of the instrumentation he was used to at the weapons station of even as shitty a ship as the Pulver, so he resorted to a ruler and an abacus. "Shit. About 20 kph."

"Mm-hmm." Decisions were sprouting in Pixy's mind, dreadful decisions. "And the infantry?"

He was busy again, the abacus clacking. "Not even close, ma'am. The northern contacts will be here in about ten minutes, Cooper in maybe twenty?"

"They won't last that long." Pixy's conviction was absolute, the problem clear in her mind. Only one more data point was needed. "What are those northerly contacts, Sergeant Lim? Can you tell?" When she craned her neck to stare up at the observer, past his jittery boots, she could see him staring hard into his eyepieces.

"Something big and fast." He blinked down at her. "I don't know. Tanks, maybe? At least a dozen."

"Yeah," Pixy muttered. They were compromised, she knew, and probably had been from the moment they landed. She'd been playing whist while the enemy gathered fucking tanks in the distance and rushed troops toward the infantry objective, waiting to spring the trap. "Yeah. Sergeant Fraze!" She lifted her voice toward the ladder, and his worried face appeared quickly.

"What's up, ma'am?"

"Rig for lift, sergeant. Stow all the unnecessary shit and tell Nitz to get her ass ready to work."

"Lift, ma'am?"

"Are you fucking deaf? Lift, sergeant." She spun back around and got to her feet, the decisions mounting quickly now, as clear in her mind as they had been back at that 447 fight. "Sergeant Lim? You open fire to the north just as soon as that shit's in range. Max range, I'm talking; just let them know we're awake."