Free Origins by Jamie Sawyer

from the frontline. I didn’t like them much.
    â€œI’m sure that CNN will love it,” said Jenkins. “I just hope that those poor sons of bitches make it. It was cold down there.”
    â€œThey’re getting the best medical attention that we can give them. For most of them, frostbite and hypothermia are the least of their worries.”
    There was a hitch to Ostrow’s response; one of his many tells. Ostrow had been assigned to the
Independence
as a sort of overseer – supposedly, as the final arbiter of whether an operation could or should be conducted in Directorate space – and we’d been working with him for several months. In that time, I’d learnt his tells. For an MI man, a spook, he had enough of those. The wobble in his voice? It meant that there was more to this.
    â€œGo on,” I said.
    A medtech was helping me get dressed into duty fatigues now. The simulated pain lingered on in my bones. I’d noticed that recently: how the pain seemed to last longer, would sometimes wake me in the night. It never really left me.
    Ostrow tongued the inside of his mouth, crossed his arms over his chest. “The news isn’t all good.”
    â€œIs he…?” Jenkins asked.
    â€œPFC Kaminski is fine,” Ostrow said. “He’ll need some surgery for those nerve-staples, but he’s going to pull through.”
    â€œThen what is it?” I said.
    â€œAhh… Sector Command is requesting your immediate recall.”
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    â€œWe’re going to Calico Base.”
    Ostrow couldn’t have known the effect that would have on me; surely didn’t know
why
I hated Calico. I found it very hard to conceal my reaction though, and Ostrow swallowed hard – took an unconscious half-step away from me.
    Anywhere but Calico…
I thought.
    Ostrow regained his composure. “The orders just came through. Captain Qadr is plotting a course directly out of Rim space, and we’ll be leaving Directorate territory within the next six hours.”
    I couldn’t actually remember having even spoke to Qadr. He, or she, was another interchangeable Navy captain; another face assigned to ferry around the Lazarus Legion. I recalled, with a pang of self-condemnation, what had happened to so many Navy staff under my command.
    â€œTell him to cancel the order.”
    â€œI’m not going to do that. She has her orders.”
    â€œAnd I’m ordering you.”
    Ostrow smiled. His skin was a deep olive, hair neatly slicked back. He’d once told me that he was from Mainfall, Proxima Centauri III; where apparently the sun-baked American ideal lived on.
    â€œI’m Military Intelligence. Under the joint military charter, you can’t give me orders. We’re currently moving under FTL drive past the last world in the Rodonis Capa system.”
    I stormed out of the SOC, through the
Independence
’s narrow corridors. She was a littoral combat ship, made for operations close to the shore, and she had seen better days. Most of her belly had been torn out and refitted, to accommodate the multiple Sim Ops bays. The place stunk of amniotic and electrolyte fluids; of data-port lubricant and sweat. Operators were gradually drifting from their bays, stumbling about in a semi-daze: troopers from Baker’s Boys, the Raiders, the Vipers. Although some deaths had probably been kinder or faster than others, every single one of them had just died on Capa V.
    Ostrow followed after me, his boots tapping against the deck. “You want my advice?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “But I’ll bet you’re going to give it to me anyway.”
    Ostrow did just that. “This has to stop. You’ve got to put what happened in the Damascus Rift behind you.”
    I can’t do that
, I thought,
because I don’t want to put it behind me.
The Rift had changed everything. I’d been so close to finding Elena –