“My condolences, Matthias.” Senator Rezkin said, leaning over and placing a hand on the eldest Ziggenbor brother’s knee.

The report was short and precise, stating only that the 9-907th were the only battalion remaining, and that the Tenth Fleet’s Detachment Echo had arrived along with the Ascendency for extraction.

Matt sipped his tea. “Appreciated, but unnecessary, ma’am.”

“You believe Neil made it out?”

“Perhaps not yet. Until confirmation, however, I’ll keep believing he’s alive.”

“That’s remarkably optimistic of you.”

“It’s not. It’s simply the lie that I need to tell myself when I know my brothers are in danger.” He shrugged. “When Martin was commanding during the CCC, I had to tell myself the same thing. But he’s got the brain of a tactician that’s earned the respect of the Nine, and Neil is unrivaled when it comes to finding his way out of tight situations, particularly ones of his own making. Combine that with that yolk of Ziggenbor bullheadedness and disregard for being told what's impossible, they’re a duo that should have been assigned together.”

“But you are worried.”

Matt huffed out a sigh. “I would say ‘like you wouldn’t believe’, but I’m sure you would.”

“I would.”

Nodding, Matt sipped his tea again.

“As much as I’ve missed our dates, Senator, I am quite curious as to what has prompted their resurrection at this… interesting juncture.”

“A note from a mutual old friend.”

“That list is short.” Rezkin said, pursing her wrinkled lips. Then she nodded and sighed, resignedly, putting the pieces together. “That old crow. You spoke to him?”

“I got a note.”

“Fossil.” She sniffed. “Pen and paper I take it, the man is quaint indeed. About St Angel, I take it?”

Matt sucked in through his teeth but Rezkin waved her hand. “I activated my web before you came through the door, Matthias, it’s only us and the dogs listening now. What did this note say?”

“That St Angel was active again, and that I needed to make the senate see reason.”

“They won’t.” Rezkin said, a bite in her flat voice. “Not until the threat is knocking down our door and thousands more have died. Though if you do manage it here when I’m at the end, I’ll be very angry at you.” She put down her tea. “He always was fond of giving impossible tasks. Do you remember him much from your time in RAPIDS?”

Matt chose his words carefully. “I don’t remember much about RAPIDS, except failing.” Matt said, false bitterness welling up in his tone. “But he always seemed like a fair officer.”

“Yes. Fair, exploitive, and subtle. The man knows how to apply leverage to the assets afforded to him in ways few officers do. But I’m afraid there’s little more that I can do to effect this situation than you. Not without more information.”

“He didn’t give me any.”

“Have you taken any?”

“Ma’am?”

“Matthias.” Rezkin smiled sweetly and folded her hands in her lap. “I spent three years cosseted in an office with that man while he babbled on about tactics and assets and the proper pressure to apply to any given situation. In his youth, Captain Neerson,” She said in a mocking tone, puffing out her narrow chest. “Always gave the impression of a blustering, yet capable man, hardly worth listening to.”

“I’d heard that was his reputation.” Matt said after a pause.

“That’s what everyone has heard his reputation was, as was his design. But admirals become such figure heads, and he wanted to control his own narrative. Of course, anyone with the patience and mental fortitude to suffer through getting to know the man would notice that it was very difficult to maintain eye contact with him.”

“That’s not so uncommon.”

“For very different reasons. The old poets and philosophers, even scientists and those worthless theologians all liked to drawl on about the eyes being the windows to the soul, each of them making the same point from different angles about how to hold eye contacts was to grow further into a person, and know them on a more intimately personal level. Not so with Richard Neerson.”

This revelation made Matt very slightly uncomfortable. “Um… I don't--”

“Senators don’t say ‘um’, Matthias.” She snapped, lifting the tea to her lips again. “And anyone with prudence and a value on what they say, and the time in which they would say it strives to eliminate it from their vocabulary.”

“Then I don’t understand. What was different about him?”

Rezkin took a long pull of her tea. Then, “The man never considered the eyes the windows to the soul. Never had much use for souls, him. No, Richard always saw them as doorways into the mind. The longer you held his gaze, it was like he was taking notes. Trying to predict what you were going to say, what you were going to do, what you would need to accomplish the task presented to you.” For the first time in the conversation, Rezkin looked a bit uneasy. “He would be taking information.”

“And he was good at it?”

Rezkin raised her eyebrows. “The man blustered his way to the rank of Commander by what looked like circumstance and luck. Everyone underestimated him, present company included… but I caught on before most. And when the man took command, everything changed. Not quickly, not obviously, but the ranting anger ebbed away a little too easily, and the long winded speeches about the merits of military doctrine took on a new tone. The superiority illusion of officers being far superior to enlisted men and women was dropped overnight. Richard Neerson became what he is today through the manipulation of perception, and it was then that those above him realized just how close he had been playing his hand. No one holds true wilds like that man, the bastard.” She grimaced at some memory. “Did you know it was him that invented that awful game?”

“I… fu--”

“Please, please, Matthias.”

“The Blind Man’s Gambit.” Matt said, using the game’s official name.

“Yes.” She said, “He would take his officers into a dark office where they would play for hours, and hours, forcing them at times to take timed turns of twenty minutes or more. Other times they would have three seconds to decide their next play. He was forcing them to take information.” And then she set her empty tea cup aside and, from somewhere, flourished a deck of cards, shuffling them much more deftly than her knobby and wrinkled hands seemed able. “I will impose no such foolishness on you today, but,” She dealt four cards in turn, two to herself and two to Matt on the small table between them. Then seven cards to each. “I do believe that it would be prudent to see things from Fleet Admiral Neerson’s perspective as we attempt to take information from him.”

Matt fanned his cards in front of him and surveyed his deck. “Without him here?”

“Theft is often best conducted when the purveyor is not present, wouldn’t you agree? I will start.” She placed two cards on her blinds, a seven, and a ten. Matt cursed.

“Why,” Senator Rezkin asked, conversationally. “Would the Admiral personally accompany a straightforward extraction mission on his flagship?”

--

“I,” Troy said for the fiftieth time. “Fucking hate Mars.”

It would have been grating if Neil, and probably the others, hadn’t been thinking the same thing. Simmons had come back to report on a long series of winding trenches that had been made by one of the runaway water systems that had failed in being fully realized during the first terraforming. But it would cover their overhead from any of the marauders still looking for them.

“Do a pretty good job of trapping us in with ground troops, though.” Vane had muttered. “Or keeping us in a fire tunnel if they do spot us.”

The comments were true, but unhelpful. It was a miracle they had survived the blast when the other three on the stripe hadn’t. It was likewise a miracle that Flint and Neil had survived the high speed impact with more than a broken arm and dislocated shoulder. But Neil was willing to bet that if a proper medic had their hands on them, none of them would be on their feet.

Troy readjusted the APES system across his shoulders. “What do you think about Mars, Sergeant Z? You like it?”

“I fucking hate it.” Neil muttered, playing the game.

“Goddamn.” Troy muttered. “Me fuckin’ too.”

“You think you still need that?” Flint asked. “It looks heavy.”

“Heavy as fuck if you want a turn carrying it.” He flashed a wide grin at her. “I got three more charge clips. Usually burn through those in about five seconds apiece, but if’n the time comes I’ll have to be sparin’. Ask him.” Troy jerked his head to the mortars. “Looks like he might need some help carrying those rounds.”

“Don’t.” Neil said. “Do not ask an ammo bearer if he needs help carrying his rounds.”

“Why not?” Flint asked.

“Cause he’ll tell ya if he needs help.” Morgon said, the mortar cannon and baseplate strapped awkwardly across his back. “And if you try to touch his rounds without his permission he’ll kill you stone dead.”

“Really?”

Simmons spat on the ground. “Stone fucking dead.”

“Why?”

“Let me ask you something Flint,” Neil said, finding his footing on a downward slope. “All your radio equipment and someone tries to come up and someone tries to fuck with it, what would you do?”

“Tell them to fuck off, likely.”

“And if that radio equipment could explode and kill everyone around it if handled improperly?” Neil grimaced as his foot slipped. “I bet you wouldn’t give many second chances either.”

“No. Are they likely to explode if improperly handled?”

“Fuck no.” Simmons said. “You could play baseball with these things and they wouldn’t go off.”

“Then--”

“Look, there’s an internal rod that does some hocus pocus magic at peak flight that makes the mortar go boom.” Morgon said. “Doesn’t happen till after the firing pin has been depressed and a certain mumbo jumbo in the atmospheric pressure happens and the things isn’t gonna explode before then.”

“Shouldn’t you know all that, being a mortar specialist.”

“I do know all that.” Morgon beamed. “But you’re not a mortar specialist, and you don’t need to know about it. So I’m not going to tell you. But if you want to play baseball when we get back, let me know and I’ll give you a few lessons.”

It took Flint a few minutes to absorb that, then her face lit up. “You’d show me how to use the system? My sister went to the mortar sections, but I was too smart.”

“Fuck you. And basics only, unless you submit the paperwork for the full cross training course. That process is a pain in my asshole and I don’t do it unless I’m ordered. As all the officers, are dead, I’m in the clear. But I can show you the old obsolete way of doing things too. But,” Morgon turned to her and raised his eyebrows. “You gotta make it back.”

“Deal.” She grinned, and continued chatting with the Mortars about their differing jobs. As they did, Neil turned. “Troy.”

“Sergeant?”

“Specialist Troy, yeah?”

Troy frowned and indicated the shield on the front of his body armor. Each side of the shield had three small arcs emanating from it, indicating his rank within the specialist corps.

“Do you know a private Troy?”

Troy’s step hitched, and his face that had been so bright with the dramatic hate he had been expressing about their situation vanished. He looked at the ground. “Yeah, I knew him.”

“A relative of yours?”

“My brother, Sergeant.” Then he frowned. “Different daddy. But my blood. You jumped on him the first night of the attack.”

“Fuck…” Neil thought about the two privates that he had jumped on when their base had been hit. He remembered feeling the place where the private’s skull had been, and the brain matter sliding between his fingers. “I’m sorry.”

Troy adjusted the APES on his shoulders. “He knew what he signed up for. Fitting for who he was that his last words were ‘fuck yourself’, no matter who they were going to.”

Though there was no way for Troy to know about the last conversation Major Darrow had with him, the shame she had talked about lanced through him. “He played a good hand.”

“He was a good kid.” Troy said, a little roughly. “I’ll miss him like hell. You got a brother up there somewhere, yeah?” He jabbed a finger at the sky.

“I got two.” Neil confirmed. “One’s a big shot commander of a warship and one's a bigshot senator in the Cluster.”

“Lookit the Ziggenbors.” Troy said with a small smile. “Family of bigshots.”

Neil snorted. “Well, there’s them and there’s me. Not sure where I rank in the pecking order as far as careers go.”

“The way I see it is you’ve got one who prolly got an army of suits around him makin’ sure he’s squared away, you got another with an army of uniforms around him doin’ the same. Not saying that they got east jobs, not sayin’ what they do ain’t important. But you got nothing but some sweating asscracks walking through a martian canyon with a situation that’s been well and truly outta your hands since the onset. Stack up the pecking order of who got the tougher of the jobs I’d say you’re in a bit of different league, Sarge.”

“Hold.” Vane hissed, and everyone stopped. There was the sound of a screaming engine somewhere off to their east, and Neil pointed to the ground where the canyon wall met. As discussed, the hunkered down and were very still, Vane creeping forward and up the canyon wall to where he had the slightest of vantage points.

It was in these moments that Neil reflected on time, and what bullshit it was. But a clock into a medical bay, it dragged on. Put one in a canteen, it sped by. Take one away, and it all but stopped entirely. Neil watched Vane watch the ground outside, and listened. The screaming whine of the engines had died off, replaced by the landing jets set into the bottom of the craft. He tried to guess the positions, but not having the familiarity with inter-atmospheric crafts that his brother did, it was all but impossible. It could have been fifty meters or three hundred for all he knew.

Still Sergeant Vane waited, and watched. Then he glanced at Neil, tapping his rifle. Flint and Morgon drew their sidearms, the rest of them holding their rifles low and ready. All was silent, all was still, and still Vane watched. Neil knew that the Sergeant was a washout from the long range marksmanship and sniper course, but only just. The man was a wealth of knowledge on guessing distances and noting details about enemy troop movement. Even if he didn’t have any other option, Neil trusted his judgment.

Maybe a half hour went by before Vane returned to position. “There’s about thirty all combing through the wreckage now. I think they noted the canyon, but didn’t pay it any mind. They probably don’t think anyone could have survived.”

“As far as assumptions go, that one’s not too much of a stretch.” Morgon said. “Maybe we caught a break there.”

“Don’t count on it.” Vane said. “Those two Rapiers were flying with us for long enough to get an accurate personnel count.”

“Most everyone there’s probably tomato paste, though.” Troy put in.

“Again, don’t count on anything.” Vane said, turning to Neil. “Sergeant?”

“Ascraeus Mons is still the secondary extraction.” Neil said. “Even if our spacefaring saviors have given us up as dead, if they are sending anyone, they’ll check there. Nothing’s changed. We’ll stick down here as long as we can or until nightfall. Then we’ve got to make the slopes, one way or another.”