Free Scattered Suns by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

actions. Still, much as she hated their screwed-up priorities, the bureaucracy and prejudices, and all the ill-advised things they insisted on doing, the Hansa’s powerful military was the only force humanity had that might stand up against the hydrogues.
    And she hated the drogues more than anything the EDF had done...so far.
    Unexpectedly, while she watched the teams wrap up their scheduled exercises, a transmitted request and event summary appeared on the small screen of her suit’s text unit. “Roamer outpost captured at Hhrenni, numerous prisoners taken at greenhouse domes. Request assistance/reassignment of Commander Tamblyn to liaise with new Roamer detainees and escort them to Llaro. Her background may be useful.”
    Appended to the formal request, she saw a single line from Admiral Willis, her Grid 7 commanding officer. “Request approved. But only if Tamblyn wants to do it.”
    Tasia caught her breath. Another Roamer facility trashed? She tried to remember what sort of settlement had been located at Hhrenni and which clan had run it, but she’d been away from that way of life for so long. Even though her last battle had been a debacle—at Osquivel, where she had lost her lover and friend Robb Brindle—Tasia wished she could be out fighting the enemy. Making sure Roamer prisoners weren’t abused might be the next best thing.
    “Rest assured, Admiral,” she keyed into the response window, “Tamblyn wants to do it.”
    Here on Mars, her talents were being wasted. She was bored, forced to stay where absolutely nothing was going on. Anyplace had to be better than this.
     
    Chapter 11—ROBB BRINDLE

    Would the nightmare ever stop in this impossible place? He had no way of determining how long he’d been trapped among the hydrogues, but Robb was sure his imprisonment had already lasted more than an eternity. The unbroken tedium was almost as bad as the constant fear. Since he was nominally in charge of the group, he led regular workout sessions and skill games to keep up morale as much as possible and keep their minds and reflexes sharp. None of his fellow captives could guess what the hydrogues meant to do to them. Robb wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
    “I wish that little compy would come back,” he muttered. He had said it countless times before.
    “We’re on a completely different planet now,” said Charles Gomez, whose hangdog expression never changed. “Remember, they evacuated us.” His eyes remained fixed on the spongy, sloped floor, rarely meeting the faces of his miserable comrades. Gomez had been captured when hydrogues overran the lumber operations on Boone’s Crossing, annihilating several villages that EDF ships could not rescue in time. The drogues had snatched Gomez for their...experiments? Their zoo? All the prisoners had similar stories.
    “The drogues’ll never tell us what that emergency was,” Robb said, “or where they took us.” All he remembered was a flash of light and a lurching sensation. Then the clouds outside the immense wonderland city were different. Still hellish, but different. “I don’t suppose standard POW protocols translate into their language.”
    Robb hunkered down. His wing commander’s uniform was stiff and rumpled from countless weeks without washing or changing. The hydrogue captors provided water and rubbery blocks of “food,” and somehow the captives’ waste was disposed of from time to time, but the liquid-metal creatures did not seem to comprehend the human need for bathing or clean clothes. The transparent holding chamber reeked, but Robb no longer even noticed the smell.
    Though there wasn’t much hope they could ever set foot outside their confinement chamber, much less discover a way out of the gas giant’s depths, the captives followed the unspoken imperative of survival. But they had few resources and even less information. Some had tried to think of ways to commit suicide, surrendering utterly to despair, but Robb was not one to