She jumped down off the payload, then turned around and drummed against it a couple times. “So let’s get this thing up and moving. We don’t have any time to lose.”

Malby threw his hands up. “Hold the hell up!” He looked around incredulously at the others. “This mission was shit from the start. Dropping into a Da’hune planet—even one that isn’t strategic—and expecting to make contact and hold hands, or claws, or whatever, and sing songs together?”

“It was shit from the start,” added Hector, as though he was discussing a bad meal and not the mission they were currently on. “They’ve tried to kill all of humanity. Twice.”

“Not the first time we’ve made friends with people that wanted to kill us,” Miggs noted sourly.

“Not aliens who wanted to exterminate us!” Malby exploded.

He was right, of course. It was bullshit, and not the kind of bullshit that just might work. This was the kind of desperate bullshit that you went for when your entire empire was crumbling. The Reds had gone to bed with the Dalmuk, so the Empire was trying to get in bed with the Da’hune.

Only humanity could screw things up this much.

“Quite whining, Malby,” Miggs said distractedly. She was still refusing to look at Dragon.

Hector shrugged, as if to say that he’d said his piece, and put his hand on his holstered pulse rifle.

Malby turned to Jiang, almost pleading. “Jiang, you see this, right? We’re bringing the Da’hune an ass-kissing gift that doesn’t work, and we expect them to just be OK with it?”

Jiang shrugged and looked at Lucky as if to say, “What do I do with this?” Malby was right. Of course he was. That even Malby could see this was perhaps the most concerning fact of all.

This mission had April’s fingerprints all over it, even if it had come down standard channels. Lucky had known it as soon as he found himself waking up on the Eberly and Rocky had uploaded the mission data to his mind. Frankly, Rocky had known it right then and said as much. It was crazy. He had to hope that there was a piece of the mission that he wasn’t privy to that would cause it to all make sense. So far, he hadn’t seen it, and it didn’t sound like Dragon was it, either.

“We’re Marines, Malby. We don’t make the missions, we just make them work.” Lucky knew he was using a line he’d heard a hundred times before. But dammit, it was right, wasn’t it?

Malby shook his head, angry at the universe.

“What’s the alternative?” Jiang asked.