“I understand that that was what we should have done from the beginning.”
“Yes, well, twenty-twenty hindsight, and all of that. What they don’t want, what they don’t want at all costs, is a shooting war with Beijing while there’s still a chance of resolving things peacefully. We can’t afford another major war right now.”
“Excuse me, Senator,” Kaitlin said, exasperated, “but has anyone told those bozos that the shooting war has already started? That we’ve lost forty men and women on Europa already. Plus over two hundred people on the Roosevelt, and twenty-nine on the Kennedy—including, damn you, my son!”
“Kaitlin—”
“I will not sit by and see the same thing happen to those forty-one Marines still on station!” There was no stopping the tears now, which clung to her face, or drifted, sparkling like stars in the compartment’s lighting. “Not while I’m alive! Not while I’m a Marine!”
“Colonel Garroway! Please!”
“We have a responsibility to the men and women we put in harm’s way!”
“Are you finished?”
Kaitlin was breathing hard. She wiped her face with her free hand, sending teardrops shimmering through the air. “No. But I’ll shut up for now, Senator.”
“Good. Because I want to tell you something. I once had the opportunity to talk to a young woman who wanted to be a Marine. I think she wanted to be a Marine more than anything else in the world. I asked her why.
“She thought for a moment, and then told me. ‘You can be in the Army,’ she said. ‘You can be in the Air Force or in the Navy. But you are a Marine.’ There is no such thing as an ex-Marine, you know. Only formerly active Marines. Or retired Marines.
“I am a Marine, Kaitlin. It’s something you can’t take away from me. No one can. Maybe I retired twelve years ago, maybe I’m a goddamned senator now, but I am still a Marine. And, as it happens, I agree with you. A Marine never leaves another Marine behind, no matter what.
“And so the question is, Marine, what the hell are we going to do about it?”
C-3, E-DARES Facility,
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
1815 hours Zulu
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, Major. Relief is not, repeat not on the way.”
General Altman’s image wavered and slipped, before steadying again. The signal, heavily encrypted and compressed into a very tight, short data squirt, had suffered some resolution loss in its forty-minute voyage out from Earth.
Jeff’s jaw tightened, his fists closed. Beside him, Melendez stiffened slightly. Kaminski shook his head. Biehl muttered something beneath his breath. The others kept their faces expressionless, watchful.
“Alpha Company is loaded aboard the Jefferson,” Altman continued. “Plus an ad hoc company of volunteers from Two-MSEF. They’re ready to hump. However, the Senate is now debating whether to even allow a relief expedition to go to Europa.
“Major, I know this is really bad news for you people. I’m not going to try to run your show from five astronomical units away, but it’s beginning to look as though surrender may be your only option.”
There it was. The surrender option, the S-word, as he and his subordinates had begun jokingly referring to it. His communications exchanges with Earth over the last few days had been carefully avoiding the topic, especially with the company holding its own so well. But the word had been certain to surface sooner or later.
But damn the forty-minute time delay that required communications with Earth to be, not a conversation, but a series of monologues, alternating between Earth and Europa. It left him unable to respond directly to anything his superiors might say, leaving a gulf that only emphasized how isolated, how very much on his own, he really was.
“Colonel Garroway and some others here are exploring alternative options,” Altman was saying. “I suggest that you continue to hold out as long as you can, while we see if any of those options prove feasible. However, if your command is in danger of being overrun, you are authorized to negotiate the best terms of surrender you can manage. There’s no sense in throwing your lives away to no good purpose.”
And what the hell did that mean? What about the men and women who’d died on the ice already? Had everything they’d done so far been for nothing?
“And…one more piece of bad news, I’m afraid. Our tracking sources report that the Chinese A-M transport Xing Feng has left cis-lunar space and is en route for Jupiter. She appears to be using constant acceleration, so you can expect her arrival there within five days. No word on her cargo, though she is carrying at least six Descending Thunder landing craft. I think we can safely assume that Beijing has decided to reinforce her forces on Europa.