“That’s super,” I replied. “You speak any Russian? Tell those guys to take a piss break until then, and we’re good.”
The next time I popped my head up to fire back, I glanced at Lucky Thirteen and saw that the Russians were all over her, using her armored hull as cover.
I’ll never be able to tell for sure how I knew what was about to happen. There was something in the air all of a sudden—a whiff of burnt ozone smell, and a strange sound, like a piezo switch. It felt as if the air itself was electrically charged. All I remember is that I ducked back behind the rock ledge, and yelled at the others to get down, get down, get the fuck down.
Lucky Thirteen blew up with the loudest bang I’ve ever heard in my life. The shock of the explosion traveled through the rock and knocked us all flat on our asses. From one moment to the next, the air was so thick with dust that I couldn’t see my own hands in front of me.
I have no idea how long we were huddled down behind the rock ledge, blind and deaf, with debris and dust raining down on us. The Russians could have finished us off easily at that point, if there had been any left. When we dust finally settled, and we gathered ourselves up, the little plateau where Lucky Thirteen had crash-landed was swept clean. In the spot where the ship had been, there was a shallow depression in the rock, and streaks of black burn marks fanning out in every direction. All around, there were burning and smoldering drop ship parts, none of them bigger than a mess table.
Lucky Thirteen had done me a last favor. The fuse for the self-destruct charge had delayed until the ship had Russians crawling all over and inside her—until the explosion would do the most good.
I’m not one of the superstitious pilots. My rational side knows it was a technical fluke, a delay in the trigger mechanism, a circuit that didn’t close in time, a fortunate defect. But part of me wants to believe that the ship saved my life that day—that this collection of parts bolted together thirty years ago in a factory back on Earth, a Wasp-C like a thousand others and yet like no other ship I’ve ever flown, knew our peril and immolated itself at just the right moment, in a final act of service to its pilot.
The cavalry arrived ten minutes too late, as it often does. The Shrikes made a few passes overhead, but if there were any Russians left alive, they wisely remained under cover. Twenty minutes after that, a pair of SAR drop ships swooped in and scooped us up.
While we were waiting for the drop ships, Sergeant Fisher picked up something in the dirt, looked it over briefly, and tucked it into his pocket. Later, when we were strapped into our jump seats and on the way back to the ship in orbit, he fished the item out and handed it to me without a word.
It was a chunk of Lucky Thirteen’s assembly number plate, twisted and charred on both ends. The manufacturer’s name was missing, but I could clearly read her serial number on the mangled little strip of steeclass="underline" 13-02313.
I bit my lip and slipped the number plate into my own pocket, also without a word.
They patched us up and gave us medals. I put Sergeant Fisher in for a Silver Star, and he got it. The Captain in charge of the recon team we picked up recommended me for an award as well. The division brass looked over the records and decided that I should get a Distinguished Flying Cross for Fomalhaut. Two months later, they called me down to the hangar deck, and the regiment’s CO pinned the DFC onto my baggy flight suit.
I didn’t turn it down, even though I didn’t want it. You don’t turn down awards just because you think you don’t deserve them. If the drop ship jocks started doing that, the only people wearing ribbons would be the desk jockeys, the officers who let their buddies put them in for medals after milk run missions that may have involved shots fired within half a parsec. Promotions ride on points, and those ribbons count for a lot of those points. I took the medal, saluted, and smiled like a good Second Lieutenant who wants to make Captain someday.
But back in my berth, I took that DFC out of its silk-lined case and put it into the chest pocket of my Class A uniform, the one I wear maybe once a year. Then I got out Lucky Thirteen’s number plate fragment and tucked it into the medal case instead. It seemed a more appropriate tenant for that nice little silk-lined case.
They gave me a new ship, of course. I got a brand new Whiskey Wasp after all. It’s a fine ship, the newest and most advanced version of the Wasp drop ship, twice as powerful and four times as capable as my old crate.
Still, I’d trade it off in a second if I could get back Lucky Thirteen just for a little while.