by Joe Haldeman
There were four people on top of him, and a ring around them of about fifty people, watching the struggle. “Spread out, dammit! There might be a thousand more of them waiting to get us in one place.” We dispersed, grumbling. By unspoken agreement we were all sure that there were no more live Taurans on the face of the planet.
Cortez was walking toward the prisoner while I backed away. Suddenly the four men collapsed in a pile on top of the creature…Even from my distance I could see the foam spouting from his mouth-hole. His bubble had popped. Suicide.
“Damn!” Cortez was right there. “Get off that bastard.” The four men got off and Cortez used his laser to slice the monster into a dozen quivering chunks. Heartwarming sight.
“That’s all right, though, we’ll find another one—everybody! Back in the arrowhead formation. Combat assault, on the Flower.”
Well, we assaulted the Flower, which had evidently run out of ammunition (it was still belching, but no bubbles), and it was empty. We scurried up ramps and through corridors, fingers at the ready, like kids playing soldier. There was nobody home.
The same lack of response at the antenna installation, the “Salami,” and twenty other major buildings, as well as the forty-four perimeter huts still intact. So we had “captured” dozens of buildings, mostly of incomprehensible purpose, but failed in our main mission, capturing a Tauran for the xenologists to experiment with. Oh well, they could have all the bits and pieces they’d ever want. That was something.
After we’d combed every last square centimeter of the base, a scoutship came in with the real exploration crew, the scientists. Cortez said, “All right, snap out of it,” and the hypnotic compulsion fell away.
At first it was pretty grim. A lot of the people, like Lucky and Marygay, almost went crazy with the memories of bloody murder multiplied a hundred times. Cortez ordered everybody to take a sed-tab, two for the ones most upset. I took two without being specifically ordered to do so.
Because it was murder, unadorned butchery—once we had the antispacecraft weapon doped out, we hadn’t been in any danger. The Taurans hadn’t seemed to have any conception of person-to-person fighting. We had just herded them up and slaughtered them, the first encounter between mankind and another intelligent species. Maybe it was the second encounter, counting the teddy bears. What might have happened if we had sat down and tried to communicate? But they got the same treatment.
I spent a long time after that telling myself over and over that it hadn’t been me who so gleefully carved up those frightened, stampeding creatures. Back in the twentieth century, they had established to everybody’s satisfaction that “I was just following orders” was an inadequate excuse for inhuman conduct…but what can you do when the orders come from deep down in that puppet master of the unconscious?
Worst of all was the feeling that perhaps my actions weren’t all that inhuman. Ancestors only a few generations back would have done the same thing, even to their fellow men, without any hypnotic conditioning.
I was disgusted with the human race, disgusted with the army and horrified at the prospect of living with myself for another century or so…Well, there was always brain-wipe.
A ship with a lone Tauran survivor had escaped and had gotten away clean, the bulk of the planet shielding it from Earth’s Hope while it dropped into Aleph’s collapsar field. Escaped home, I guessed, wherever that was, to report what twenty men with hand-weapons could do to a hundred fleeing on foot, unarmed.
I suspected that the next time humans met Taurans in ground combat, we would be more evenly matched. And I was right.
Sixteen
I was scared enough.
Sub-major Stott was pacing back and forth behind the small podium in the assembly room/chop hall/gymnasium of the Anniversary. We had just made our final collapsar jump, from Tet-38 to Yod-4. We were decelerating at 1.5 gravities and our velocity relative to that collapsar was a respectable .90c. We were being chased.
“I wish you people would relax for a while and just trust the ship’s computer. The Tauran vessel at any rate will not be within strike range for another two weeks. Mandella!”
He was always very careful to call me “Sergeant” Mandella in front of the company. But everybody at this particular briefing was either a sergeant or a corporal: squad leaders. “Yes, sir.”
“You’re responsible for the psychological as well as the physical well-being of the men and women in your squad. Assuming that you are aware that there is a morale problem aboard this vessel, what have you done about it?”
“As far as my squad is concerned, sir?”
“Of course.”
“We talk it out, sir.”
“And have you arrived at any cogent conclusion?”
“Meaning no disrespect, sir, I think the major problem is obvious. My people have been cooped up in this ship for fourteen—”
“Ridiculous! Every one of us has been adequately conditioned against the pressures of living in close quarters and the enlisted people have the privilege of confraternity.” That was a delicate way of putting it. “Officers must remain celibate, and yet we have no morale problem.”
If he thought his officers were celibate, he should sit down and have a long talk with Lieutenant Harmony. Maybe he just meant line officers, though. That would be just him and Cortez. Probably 50 percent right. Cortez was awfully friendly with Corporal Kamehameha.
“Sir, perhaps it was the detoxification back at Stargate; maybe—”
“No. The therapists only worked to erase the hate conditioning—everybody knows how I feel about that—and they may be misguided but they are skilled.
“Corporal Potter.” He always called her by her rank to remind her why she hadn’t been promoted as high as the rest of us. Too soft. “Have you ‘talked it out’ with your people, too?”
“We’ve discussed it, sir.”
The sub-major could “glare mildly” at people. He glared mildly at Marygay until she elaborated.
“I don’t believe it’s the fault of the conditioning. My people are impatient, just tired of doing the same thing day after day.”
“They’re anxious for combat, then?” No sarcasm in his voice.
“They want to get off the ship, sir.”
“They will get off the ship,” he said, allowing himself a microscopic smile. “And then they’ll probably be just as impatient to get back on.”
It went back and forth like that for a long while. Nobody wanted to come right out and say that their squad was scared: scared of the Tauran cruiser closing on us, scared of the landing on the portal planet. Sub-major Stott had a bad record of dealing with people who admitted fear.
I fingered the fresh T/O they had given us. It looked like this:
I knew most of the people from the raid on Aleph, the first face-to-face contact between humans and Taurans. The only new people in my platoon were Luthuli and Heyrovsky. In the company as a whole (excuse me, the “strike force”), we had twenty replacements for the nineteen people we lost from the Aleph raid: one amputation, four deaders, fourteen psychotics.
I couldn’t get over the “20 Mar 2007” at the bottom of the T/O. I’d been in the army ten years, though it felt like less than two. Time dilation, of course; even with the collapsar jumps, traveling from star to star eats up the calendar.
After this raid, I would probably be eligible for retirement, with full pay. If I lived through the raid, and if they didn’t change the rules on us. Me a twenty-year man, and only twenty-five years old.
Stott was summing up when there was a knock on the door, a single loud rap. “Enter,” he said.
An ensign I knew vaguely walked in casually and handed Stott a slip of paper, without saying a word. He stood there while Stott read it, slumping with just the right degree of insolence. Technically, Stott was out of his chain of command; everybody in the navy disliked him anyhow.
Stott handed the paper back to the ensign and looked through him.
“You will alert
your squads that preliminary evasive maneuvers will commence at 20:10, fifty-eight minutes from now.” He hadn’t looked at his watch. “All personnel will be in acceleration shells by 20:00. Tench…hut!”
We rose and, without enthusiasm, chorused, “Fuck you, sir.” Idiotic custom.
Stott strode out of the room and the ensign followed, smirking.
I turned my ring to my assistant squad leader’s position and talked into it: “Tate, this is Mandella.” Everyone else in the room was doing the same.
A tinny voice came out of the ring. “Tate here. What’s up?”
“Get ahold of the men and tell them we have to be in the shells by 20:00. Evasive maneuvers.”
“Crap. They told us it would be days.”
“I guess something new came up. Or maybe the Commodore has a bright idea.”
“The Commodore can stuff it. You up in the lounge?”
“Yeah.”
“Bring me back a cup when you come, okay? Little sugar?”
“Roger. Be down in about half an hour.”
“Thanks. I’ll get on it.”
There was a general movement toward the coffee machine. I got in line behind Corporal Potter.
“What do you think, Marygay?”
“Maybe the Commodore just wants us to try out the shells once more.”
“Before the real thing.”
“Maybe.” She picked up a cup and blew into it. She looked worried. “Or maybe the Taurans had a ship way out, waiting for us. I’ve wondered why they don’t do it. We do, at Stargate.”
“Stargate’s a different thing. It takes seven cruisers, moving all the time, to cover all the possible exit angles. We can’t afford to do it for more than one collapsar, and neither could they.”
She didn’t say anything while she filled her cup. “Maybe we’ve stumbled on their version of Stargate. Or maybe they have more ships than we do by now.”
I filled and sugared two cups, sealed one. “No way to tell.” We walked back to a table, careful with the cups in the high gravity.
“Maybe Singhe knows something,” she said.
“Maybe he does. But I’d have to get him through Rogers and Cortez. Cortez would jump down my throat if I tried to bother him now.”
“Oh, I can get him directly. We…” She dimpled a little bit. “We’ve been friends.”
I sipped some scalding coffee and tried to sound nonchalant. “So that’s where you’ve been disappearing to.”
“You disapprove?” she said, looking innocent.
“Well…damn it, no, of course not. But—but he’s an officer! A navy officer!”
“He’s attached to us and that makes him part army.” She twisted her ring and said, “Directory.” To me: “What about you and Little Miss Harmony?”
“That’s not the same thing.” She was whispering a directory code into the ring.
“Yes, it is. You just wanted to do it with an officer. Pervert.” The ring bleated twice. Busy. “How was she?”
“Adequate.” I was recovering.
“Besides, Ensign Singhe is a perfect gentleman. And not the least bit jealous.”
“Neither am I,” I said. “If he ever hurts you, tell me and I’ll break his ass.”
She looked at me across her cup. “If Lieutenant Harmony ever hurts you, tell me and I’ll break her ass.”
“It’s a deal.” We shook on it solemnly.
Seventeen
The acceleration shells were something new, installed while we rested and resupplied at Stargate. They enabled us to use the ship at closer to its theoretical efficiency, the tachyon drive boosting it to as much as 25 gravities.
Tate was waiting for me in the shell area. The rest of the squad was milling around, talking. I gave him his coffee.
“Thanks. Find out anything?”
“Afraid not. Except the swabbies don’t seem to be scared, and it’s their show. Probably just another practice run.”
He slurped some coffee. “What the hell. It’s all the same to us, anyhow. Just sit there and get squeezed half to death. God, I hate those things.”
“Maybe they’ll eventually make us obsolete, and we can go home.”
“Sure thing.” The medic came by and gave me my shot.
I waited until 19:50 and hollered to the squad, “Let’s go. Strip down and zip up.”
The shell is like a flexible spacesuit; at least the fittings on the inside are pretty similar. But instead of a life support package, there’s a hose going into the top of the helmet and two coming out of the heels, as well as two relief tubes per suit. They’re crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder on light acceleration couches; getting to your shell is like picking your way through a giant plate of olive drab spaghetti.
When the lights in my helmet showed that everybody was suited up, I pushed the button that flooded the room. No way to see, of course, but I could imagine the pale blue solution—ethylene glycol and something else—foaming up around and over us. The suit material, cool and dry, collapsed in to touch my skin at every point. I knew that my internal body pressure was increasing rapidly to match the increasing fluid pressure outside. That’s what the shot was for; keep your cells from getting squished between the devil and the deep blue sea. You could still feel it, though. By the time my meter said “2” (external pressure equivalent to a column of water two nautical miles deep), I felt that I was at the same time being crushed and bloated. By 20:05 it was at 2.7 and holding steady. When the maneuvers began at 20:10, you couldn’t feel the difference. I thought I saw the needle fluctuate a tiny bit, though.
The major drawback to the system is that, of course, anybody caught outside of his shell when the Anniversary hit twenty-five gees would be just so much strawberry jam. So the guiding and the fighting have to be done by the ship’s tactical computer—which does most of it anyway, but it’s nice to have a human overseer.
Another small problem is that if the ship gets damaged and the pressure drops, you’ll explode like a dropped melon. If it’s the internal pressure, you get crushed to death in a microsecond.
And it takes ten minutes, more or less, to get depressurized and another two or three to get untangled and dressed. So it’s not exactly something you can hop out of and come up fighting.
The accelerating was over at 20:38. A green light went on and I chinned the button to depressurize.
Marygay and I were getting dressed outside.
“How’d that happen?” I pointed to an angry purple welt that ran from the bottom of her right breast to her hipbone.
“That’s the second time,” she said, mad. “The first one was on my back—I think that shell doesn’t fit right, gets creases.”
“Maybe you’ve lost weight.”
“Wise guy.” Our caloric intake had been rigorously monitored ever since we left Stargate the first time. You can’t use a fighting suit unless it fits you like a second skin.
A wall speaker drowned out the rest of her comment. “Attention all personnel. Attention. All army personnel echelon six and above and all navy personnel echelon four and above will report to the briefing room at 21:30.”
It repeated the message twice. I went off to lie down for a few minutes while Marygay showed her bruise to the medic and the armorer. I didn’t feel a bit jealous.
~~~
The Commodore began the briefing. “There’s not much to tell, and what there is is not good news.
“Six days ago, the Tauran vessel that is pursuing us released a drone missile. Its initial acceleration was on the order of 80 gravities.
“After blasting for approximately a day, its acceleration suddenly jumped to 148 gravities.” Collective gasp.
“Yesterday, it jumped to 203 gravities. I shouldn’t need to remind anyone here that this is twice the accelerative capability of the enemy’s drones in our last encounter.
“We launched a salvo of drones, four of them, intersecting what the computer predicted to be the four most probable future trajectories of the enemy drone. One
of them paid off, while we were doing evasive maneuvers. We contacted and destroyed the Tauran weapon about ten million kilometers from here.”
That was practically next door. “The only encouraging thing we learned from the encounter was from spectral analysis of the blast. It was no more powerful an explosion than ones we have observed in the past, so at least their progress in propulsion hasn’t been matched by progress in explosives.
“This is the first manifestation of a very important effect that has heretofore been of interest only to theorists. Tell me, soldier.” He pointed at Negulesco. “How long has it been since we first fought the Taurans, at Aleph?”
“That depends on your frame of reference, Commodore,” she answered dutifully. “To me, it’s been about eight months.”
“Exactly. You’ve lost about nine years, though, to time dilation, while we maneuvered between collapsar jumps. In an engineering sense, as we haven’t done any important research and development aboard ship…that enemy vessel comes from our future!” He paused to let that sink in.
“As the war progresses, this can only become more and more pronounced. The Taurans don’t have any cure for relativity, of course, so it will be to our benefit as often as to theirs.
“For the present, though, it is we who are operating with a handicap. As the Tauran pursuit vessel draws closer, this handicap will become more severe. They can simply outshoot us.
“We’re going to have to do some fancy dodging. When we get within five hundred million kilometers of the enemy ship, everybody gets in his shell and we just have to trust the logistic computer. It will put us through a rapid series of random changes in direction and velocity.
“I’ll be blunt. As long as they have one more drone than we, they can finish us off. They haven’t launched any more since that first one. Perhaps they are holding their fire…or maybe they only had one. In that case, it’s we who have them.
