by Jerry
Private Sweezy. His voice tended to waver as he spoke. It always seemed tired and prickly, that voice. Ball shouted, “We’re checking to make sure you’re still with us.”
“Just go,” Sweezy’s voice said. “I can take care of myself.”
Cataldo grunted in disgust, and said to Ball, “Come on. Let’s catch up with the others.”
Ball turned wearily, and moved to follow. He walked in the direction he thought Cataldo had gone.
Invisible soldiers. Ball chuckled tiredly. Invisible soldiers on an important mission, invisible soldiers with invisible feet.
He tripped again, and fell.
The week before, Ball had been safe, tucked far underground in the winding, humid, steel-rimmed tunnels of Fort Deep. He had been sitting on a hard bench outside Captain Schemmer’s office.
They were giving Ball a mission. He wondered if he was going to die. Cataldo had come and gone already, but Sweezy was still in there. Ball could hear the voices through the door.
Sweezy’s voice, prickly and desperate: “Why me? I’m a good soldier. You know I’m a good soldier. I train all the time. I study all the intel, hard. I don’t deserve—”
The captain’s voice, female, too low and gruff to hear the words.
Then Sweezy again, “But—”
Then the captain, and so on.
Finally, the door opened and Sweezy emerged. He was skinny, with a huge, lumpy head, and big eyes ringed with darkness.
Ball said softly, “Hey Sweezy.”
Sweezy, sweaty and pale, nodded and walked on past.
Captain Schemmer called, “Private Ball.”
Ball stood, entered, saluted. The office was spartan: one desk and two chairs, one chair for the captain, one for Ball. The walls were made of hewn boulder and plate steel. Schemmer wasn’t made of those things, but she could have been. She nodded for him to sit. He sat.
She said, “You’ve been picked for an important mission. Earth Army is conducting field tests of the new phased camouflage.” She stared at him levelly. “You’ve seen the reports?”
“Yes, sir.” He hadn’t bothered, actually, but he’d heard of the camouflage. “That stuff the Kraven-Hish mercenaries use.” He suppressed a shudder. “That makes them invisible.”
“We’ve developed our own. You’re going to test it under battlefield conditions.”
Ball blinked. “Battlefield, sir?”
“You’re going to walk across the planet surface, from Hatch E to Hatch A.”
Ball caught his breath. For months, orbital assault platforms had circled high overhead in the orange-dust sky. They swept over the horizon and launched missile attacks against anything that moved on the surface. “But the orbitals—”
“Won’t see you,” Schemmer said. “Not if the camouflage works. Just like they don’t see the Kraven-Hish mercenaries. We’ve done tests. The camouflage has passed every one. You should be pretty safe. But we need to know whether this stuff holds up under real conditions. We need to send some people outside with it, for a week or more.”
“Me?” Ball glanced back over his shoulder. “And Sweezy?”
“And some others. Yes.”
So they needed a couple guys, some guys who could walk. And maybe these guys would get nuked. So they picked the most useless guys here.
Himself. Cataldo. Sweezy.
Goddamnit.
“Yes, Captain,” Ball said.
The six suits were sheer, gray and filmy, like a trout’s eye. The elbows, knees, and boots were thickly padded. Air processors and rifles, all that same dull color, hung from the shoulders. The rifles were linked to the suit by thin cords.
“The cord’s so you don’t lose the rifle,” one of the technicians said. “It’ll be invisible too, once you power up.”
Six suits. Ball glanced around the room.
Private Dimon, rat-faced and sleazy, was over in the corner sucking up to Cataldo. So Dimon was in.
Plus Cataldo.
Sweezy.
And Ball himself made four. Two more.
A calm, friendly voice said, “Ball.”
He turned. Private Reice, young, soft-spoken and good-natured, stood grinning.
“Damn,” Ball said, “They got you, too.”
Reice nodded. “Me.” He glanced toward the door. “And the corporal too, it looks like.”
Corporal Tennet, tall and brave, walked into the room.
“He probably volunteered,” Ball said quietly.
The corporal cleared his throat. “All right, everyone. Suit up.”
The technicians helped Ball into one of the suits. The material clung tight around his biceps and thighs. A foggy, translucent mask covered his face.
One of the technicians said, “There are buttons inside the material on the left wrist. You can feel them.”
Ball ran his fingers down his arms. He felt four knobby bumps.
“Punch in your code,” said another technician, demonstrating on the corporal, “like this.”
Light flashed, bright as a signal flare. The technician backed away from the glow. The corporal was gone.
Ball waited, tense, through a long stretch of silence.
Then the corporal’s voice: “I can’t see my hand.”
Reice strained forward, staring hard. He whispered, “Holy shit.”
The corporal’s voice again, “I can’t see my feet either.”
“Move slowly,” the technician advised. “It takes some getting used to.”
Ball heard the soft clomp of the corporal’s first step. They heard his voice, chuckling. “Everyone power up.”
Light flashed out all over. Ball shielded his eyes against the glare. He punched the code on his wrist, and then—
He saw the tip of his nose, and the dark interior rim of his helmet. He looked down. There was nothing there.
Vertigo struck him. He was falling—falling forward. He jerked upright. He dropped back a few paces, and closed his eyes. “How do you power it down?”
“You don’t,” a technician said sharply, “or you’ll die.”
“Punch the code in reverse,” said another.
Ball opened his eyes. He waved his invisible hand in front of his face. He ran his invisible fingers over his invisible wrist, over the knobby buttons. In the end, he decided not to mess with them.
Sweezy said, “How do they know these things are going to work?”
“They don’t,” Cataldo said nastily. “That’s what we’re for.”
Sweezy’s said, “I think they ought to—”
There was a sudden crash, and a desk rolled across the room, scattering pipes and wires. From somewhere down on the floor, Sweezy groaned.
Cataldo said, “Stop screwing around.”
“Someone pushed me,” Sweezy protested. There were the scrapes and thumps of him climbing to his feet. “It was you. You pushed me.”
“I didn’t push anybody,” Cataldo said.
Dimon added, “You probably tripped.”
“It was you then,” Sweezy said. “I never trip. Never. I train all the time. I . . .”
His voice trailed away as the corporal cut him off: “All right, form up and move out. Hatch E. Let’s go.”
“We’re going outside?” Ball said, half to himself. “Now?”
“What do you want, Ball?” Cataldo challenged. “A mission briefing on how to walk?”
Dimon snickered.
They marched out into the hall. A group of heavy-helmeted military police was waiting, their cold eyes tracing blankly over the spot where Ball stood. Ball gave them the finger. No response.
The police led the way down long rock and steel tunnels, then herded the group through a great oval airlock and out into the cavern beyond. The air was thin here. Enormous steel tubes stretched up to a gigantic metal plate in the ceiling. The underside of the plate read: HATCH E.
Ball flinched as the great hatch creaked and shuddered and began to descend—slow, massive, ponderous. It sank and sank and crunc
hed against the floor.
The corporal said, “Move.”
Ball scurried forward and climbed awkwardly up the steep stone façade. A voice cursed—Ball couldn’t tell whose. Then the platform rose, higher and higher. They came out into the open sky, and the hatch clanked solidly into place beneath them.
Ball stared. The vista was wide and empty. There was nothing to see here. Not even himself.
“Everybody sound off,” the corporal said.
Ball said, “I’m right next to you.” They had no radios, no locator beacons. Orbitals could track signals like that.
“I’m over here,” said Cataldo.
Next to him, Dimon. “Yeah. Me too.”
“I’m here,” said Reice.
There was a long pause.
The corporal prompted, “Sweezy?”
Finally Sweezy’s voice came, almost too soft to hear, “I’m with you.”
The corporal sighed. “All right. Hatch A is northeast of here. Northeast is that way, between those two rocks.”
Ball squinted toward the horizon. Two large rocks sat heavy and still.
The corporal said, “Move out.”
There were scraping footstep sounds as the group began to march.
Dimon said, “We’re going to die.”
“Maybe,” the corporal replied. “The first orbital comes over the horizon in forty-three minutes.” He paused. “Then we’ll know.”
Ball traced his gaze in a wide circle. “Nine days out here? Even if the orbitals don’t get us, a pack of Kraven-Hish mercenaries will.”
Cataldo said, “Maybe you haven’t noticed, Ball, but we’re invisible. They can’t see us.”
“We can’t see them either,” Ball countered.
“Exactly,” the corporal cut in. “They can’t see us. We can’t see them. No one can see anyone. So relax. And keep walking.”
Ball pulled the rifle off his shoulder and hefted it experimentally. Damned impossible, he decided, trying to aim a gun you couldn’t even see. He sighed.
Again, Dimon’s voice. “We’re going to die.”
Dimon’s voice. It came from somewhere ahead of Ball, and drifted past, and out away over the hills.
Forty-three minutes passed. The first of the orbitals came over the horizon. Ball imagined he could see it up there, a bright spot shining white against the orange sky. It looked like death.
The corporal said, “It’s time.”
Ball waited, not sure if he was breathing. He waited for a glint of metal in the sky, for a tactical nuclear assault.
Ten minutes passed.
“The orbital’s overhead,” the corporal announced. “It can’t see us.”
Ball breathed out. He slumped in his suit. Dimon started to laugh, a little crazily.
“Keep walking,” the corporal said.
The sound of scattered footsteps picked up again.
“And now—” Ball took a deep breath. “—we start worrying about Kraven-Hish mercenaries.”
“Give it a rest, Ball,” Cataldo said. “You’re bringing down my morale.”
“They might be around,” Ball argued. “A pack of them.”
“They might not,” Cataldo said.
“Who knows where they are?” Reice said. “Who knows where the hell they might be? We don’t even know what they look like.”
“They don’t look like anything,” Cataldo answered, irritated. “They’re invisible.”
Reice said, “You know what I mean.”
No one had ever gotten a picture of the Kraven-Hish; they were always invisible. You couldn’t get a picture, even if a soldier killed one, and some guys were pretty sure they had.
Ball glanced around. Imagine the whole group died out here, who’d ever find them? They’d rot. Then the suits would rot. The suits would go visible in rotted patches, nothing left of the bodies inside.
Dimon said, “You know what I heard? I heard they’ve got pictures of the Kraven-Hish. Intel has pictures. They don’t want to show us.”
Reice said, “Why would they do that?”
“They don’t want to frighten off new recruits,” Dimon said. “That’s how scary these things are. That’s what I heard.”
“That’s stupid,” Cataldo said.
“That’s what I heard,” Dimon repeated. “That’s all.”
Ball hadn’t tripped in over six hours. Maybe twelve times was his lucky number. He forced himself to grin.
From somewhere behind him, Cataldo’s voice shouted, “Sweezy!”
Ball turned. “Not again.” He took a few steps back toward Cataldo.
“Sweezy! Damn it, Sweezy. Just say something.”
The rocky wastes were silent.
“I swear, Sweezy,” Cataldo warned. “I swear this is the last time. Sound off.”
They waited and waited. There was no answer.
Ball imagined Sweezy’s face—tired and petulant, forehead scrunched, eyes staring at his feet, ignoring them.
“All right,” Cataldo called finally. “All right, if that’s how you want it. I hope you break your neck.”
Ball sighed.
Cataldo told him, “Let’s go.”
They walked up over the next rise. The scattered voices of the others were faint in valley below. It took an hour of walking to catch up.
Those voices, louder now, drifted toward them.
The corporal’s voice: “Reice. You take point for a while. I’m going to check on the others.”
“Yes, sir,” Reice’s voice said.
The corporal’s voice, “You know the way?”
“To Hatch A? Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Ball walked a few hundred yards. From right beside him the corporal’s voice came: “Who’s there?”
“Ball, sir,” Ball said. “And Cataldo.”
“Anything to report?”
Ball wondered if Cataldo would report on Sweezy, but Cataldo just said, with a trace of disgust, “No, sir. Nothing at all.”
Night fell. The dusty sky turned from orange to brown to muddy black. The cratered asteroid moons shone lovely and red. Ball lay curled up in his soft suit on the hard ground and kept his rifle close. With his fingers, he traced the invisible cord that connected the rifle to his shoulder.
Reice was resting somewhere nearby, and Dimon was somewhere down the hill. Ball wasn’t sure about the corporal, and Sweezy hadn’t spoken since that morning. No one seemed to miss him.
Dimon’s voice burst out, “Cataldo. Get off, it’s not funny. I’m trying to sleep.”
Cataldo’s voice answered, from far down the hill. “What? I’m over here.”
There was a sudden sound, a sharp, breaking sound, like a branch snapping. But there were no branches out here, nothing here to be broken except their bones. Ball said quickly, “What was that?”
“I thought I felt something,” Dimon’s voice said. There was a short pause. “Never mind. It was nothing.”
“What was that sound?” Ball pressed. “That cracking sound?”
“What sound?” Dimon’s voice said.
“I heard it, too,” Reice’s voice said.
Dimon’s voice said, “I didn’t hear anything.”
Ball rolled up onto his knees, pushed the butt of his rifle back into his shoulder, and pointed the barrel out toward the darkness.
Cataldo’s voice called, “You’re hearing things, Ball.”
“I heard it, too,” Reice insisted.
Cataldo’s voice said, “Heard what?”
“I don’t know,” Reice said. “Kind of a . . . I don’t know.”
Dimon’s voice chuckled.
Cataldo’s voice joined in. “Right.”
Ball knelt there on the rocks. He stared up at the asteroids. They glowed deep and red, like the blood of Earth Army soldiers killed by—
Kraven-Hish mercenaries.
Dozens of them could hide out here. Hundreds. Lurking invisible among the stones. They were trained to fight unseen. They could get c
lose to a person, kill a person. Silently. Or almost silently. They could kill a person, maybe mimic his voice, and then no one would ever know.
Dimon’s voice said, “Let’s get some sleep.”
Ball shuddered. It was Dimon’s voice. But was it Dimon?
A Kraven-Hish mercenary crouched deadly in the darkness there, settled over Dimon’s invisible corpse. Maybe.
Ball lay still. His ears strained for any sound, but there were no more sounds. And no more sleep.
Dawn burned orange and bright.
“Corporal,” Ball said. “I’m afraid.”
“We’re all afraid, Ball,” the corporal’s voice replied.
“I heard something last night, sir. A strange noise. I think I heard Private Dimon die.”
“I saw Dimon this morning.”
Ball didn’t say anything. The corporal waited.
“Sir.” Ball heard a strained quality creep into his own voice. “No one’s seen Dimon since Fort Deep. All we hear is a voice. Voices can be imitated.”
“You think our squad’s been infiltrated? Dimon’s voice replaced by . . .”
Ball lowered his voice. “By Kraven-Hish mercenaries. Sir, I don’t know.”
“Just Dimon?”
Ball paused. “And maybe Cataldo, I don’t know.”
“And maybe me.”
Ball sighed. “It’s possible, sir.”
“But you’re still telling me?”
“I have to tell someone,” Ball said. “If they’ve gotten you, well, then we’re all dead anyway. It’s worth the risk.”
“That’s good thinking, Ball.” There was a brief pause. “But you’re overreacting. You thought you heard a noise. Maybe it was real, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was nothing. I wouldn’t blame anyone for starting to hear things out here.”
“Reice heard it, too.”
There was a pause. The corporal’s voice called out, “Private Reice.”
Ball didn’t hear Reice’s approach, but a few moments later, his voice was there. “Sir.”
The corporal’s voice said, “You heard a noise last night?”
“No,” Reice’s voice said. “I mean, I thought maybe I did, sir, after Ball said it. But it was just my imagination. You know what it’s like here at night. The—”
“Yes,” said the corporal’s voice. “Thank you, private.”
Ball waited a while.
