Free Earthfall by Stephen Knight Page B

and that person just happens to be Rachel.” He looked at her. “You’re good with this?”
    “Mostly,” she said. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, Jeremy.”
    Jeremy looked back at Andrews. “Any further questions, Captain?”
    Andrews sighed. “No, sir.”
    Jeremy relaxed a little bit, and he squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I know it’s asking a lot of you, and I know that adding Rachel to the mix is going to make it tough for both of you personally. But there’s no choice in the matter, so you might want to try and make it as easy as possible by making sure she gets spooled up on the broad strokes of SCEV operations. All right?”
    “Yes, sir,” Andrews said. There was no use fighting it. His father was right, and the stakes were high. Better to just soldier on and get it done.
    “Good,” Jeremy said. His tablet pinged, and he had another crisis to tend to.
    ***
    In the conference room, Benchley took a moment to compose himself before the next session started. He still had a slew of damage reports to go through, and the road ahead looked bleak and desultory. He noticed Mulligan beside him at the table, staring at him with his dark gaze. “Is there something I can do for you, Sergeant Major?” Benchley asked.
    “Field duty, sir? Me? ”
    “You’ll be needed, Mulligan.”
    “How so? I haven’t been in the field for over ten years, sir. I’m an old geezer. And Rachel Andrews happens to hate my guts for—”
    “And whose fault is that?” Benchley asked, irritation plain in his voice. He took a moment to dial it back a bit before continuing. “Scott, I’m sorry. I understand the deployment will be rough, but I want your experience on tap. We don’t know what these people might run into out there. Your background and your skill set might be a very welcome addition, should things go even further into the shitter.”
    Mulligan snorted derisively, and Benchley found he couldn’t contain his irritation any longer. He fixed Mulligan with an icy stare.
    “As you still wear the uniform of the United States Army, you should be able to recognize an order when you hear one, Sergeant Major. Am I clear on that?”
    “Hooah,” Mulligan said. “With your permission, sir, I guess I ought to get to it.”
    “An excellent idea.”

6

    T he vehicle prep area was a beehive of activity as a veritable army of maintainers, engineers, and SCEV crews crawled all over the two rigs. Andrews was in the thick of it himself, overseeing the reseating of SCEV Four’s Mission Equipment Pod on the rig’s broad back. Over the past nine hours, all the systems in the pod had been tested and certified as good to go; those that had failed were serviced until they were in the green. Even the MEP’s complement of six Hellfire missiles had been replaced, and the millimeter wave seeker heads on each had been retuned to ensure perfect accuracy. That was a first; Andrews couldn’t recall a time when he had seen every missile replaced before a mission. Sure, he’d seen one or two swapped out after failing a test, but the entire complement? Never.
    “Why is patience a virtue?” Spencer shouted over the din of activity as he slid out from beneath the rig with another technician. Their coveralls were stained with oil and grime. “Why can’t ‘hurry the fuck up’ be a virtue?”
    “You can’t push this stuff,” the other maintainer said. “It’s got to go slow—you know that.”
    “Slow is a comparative term.”
    “Hey, Spence!” Andrews barked as the MEP was locked down on SCEV Four’s back. “What’s the problem?”
    Spencer looked tired but alert. He only had eyes for the rig, and he turned and scoured his high-tech baby for any defects related to the positioning of the MEP.
    A dedicated man, Andrews thought.
    “No problem, Captain. We swapped out the number one engine and the particle separator, along with the forward differential, which we’d already talked about. I was just busting McCready’s balls. He