Chapter 2

Christine hada lot of time to consider that remark she’d made about his cute ass over the next two days.

They made quick work of checking all the other bodies, loading up on all the gear they could. Focusing on water, air, and ammo; the three essentials. Only then did they plug every empty space in their packs with non-essentials like food packs.

Parello managed to cobble together enough gear to get a radio squirt out to command.

The message back said pickup in two days.

Christine made a quick sketch in the sand. “We’re here, a hundred klicks east of Ionian Mons. Just north of the equator and thirty degrees off the center line with Jupiter. So…” She did her best to remember her geography, because the onboard systems were scattered across a half kilometer of wreckage. “Tell them we’ll meet them at the neck of the Shakuru Patera.”

“Damn, Captain. Isn’t that like a thousand kilometers? Why are we doing that?”

“Tell them, Sergeant.”

He told them, then they loaded up and got underway. They set off at an easy lope, the gravity only a little higher than the Earth’s Moon. Parello took the first turn at point, though he left his recoilless SCAR rifle Velcroed against suit’s chest plate. Her own Space Combat Assault Rifle thumped against her chest with the familiarity of her own beating heart.

“Look up,” she told him. He’d left his concern about the distance open, but hadn’t questioned her orders. Even in this day and age there were still men who didn’t trust women in the Army, but apparently he wasn’t one of them.

Parello looked up. Not an easy maneuver in a suit while trotting along under light gravity and a double load of supplies. But he did it. Here was a soldier who understood his own body and had clearly trained it into a finely honed tool.

“Jupiter.” He still didn’t get it.

“We’re a mere thirty degrees off the primary flux corridor between Jupiter and Io. Radiation levels are a hundred times Earth Orbit. That’s how Moore’s ship hid from us, they rode straight up the center of the corridor.” Io, like Earth’s Moon, spun only once per orbit, always keeping the same face toward the lethal Jupiter

“Damn. No way they were shielded for that. Doesn’t the man even care about his own troops?”

“He even doesn’t care about his own daughter.” The bile was bitter in her throat as she fought back against the anger. Damn, it hurt worse every time she thought about it, not less.

“All he cared about was his goddamn crusade against the royals of the inner colonies. It killed Mom. He simply broke her heart and it killed her.”

“A thousand klicks,” Parello rolled the idea around on his tongue, decent enough to spare her the inquisition of the chunk of her soul she’d just heaved up on the Ionian surface.

She couldn’t speak yet, but she could kiss the man for his decency of ignoring her outburst.

“That gets us almost ninety degrees to the northwest of the corridor. Our suits aren’t rated for two days at the radiation levels at that crash site. And we couldn’t cobble together a shelter at the Stinger, in case the bad guys come looking.”

“Dead on.” Nothing wrong with Parello’s brain either.

“At eighteen percent gravity, that’s like a hundred and eighty kilometer hike in two days with a double-load pack.”

Christine waited for it. Nothing a grunt hated worse than long hikes. They did it. But a pair of seventy-five klick hikes back to back over unknown terrain was brutal no matter how you cut it.

“Guess the rumors were true, Captain.”

“Which ones?”

“The ones about you being a hard-ass, sir. I like that in a commander. Fits me down to my toes.” He settled into that steady ground-eating lope that a trained solider learned, or fell by the wayside. He adjusted his rhythm to Io’s gravity about as fast as she did, and she was left to follow along and contemplate his cute ass.