The Light Brigade

by Kameron Hurley

  “Sir,” Jones said, “you learn Braille, sir.”

  “That’s fucking right, Jones. Give this kiss-ass a gold fucking star. Your map and your compass are your goddamn tools when the shit hits the fan. Just because Teni can add two and two for you doesn’t mean we take math out of the corp core.”

  Grandma rolled her eyes.

  “I saw that, Vargas,” the DI said. “How about we make Jones squad leader for your little tea party? Dietz and Hadid don’t have a goddamn brain cell between them, and any more laps for you, Vargas, and you’ll be able to outrun a goddamn ghoul with dysentery. Making you listen to Jones is punishment enough.”

  They flew us into the jungle and kicked us out of the transport like shipping containers. I hit the ground hard. Lost my breath. Hell of a way to start another exercise.

  I got my blindfold off. I didn’t see any other teams nearby. I wondered how far apart they dropped us. Jones had the map. Me, Jawbone, and Grandma crowded around him. We wore military slicks, organic sheaths that regulated temperature and kept off the worst of the bugs. We called them condoms, which was as good a name as any. Nice to have some protection, but uncomfortable as hell. It was the middle of December, hot and muggy, and the mosquitos rose from the bushes in waves. The insects worked their way around the fine seams between our skin and the slicks, hungry.

  Jones folded the map over. It was a topographic map, which must have looked like some mystical scrying tool to a citizen like him.

  “Hope you paid attention in that class on terrain,” Jawbone said. “I was asleep for half of it.”

  Jones swung the compass right, then left.

  I sighed. “Give me the compass.”

  “You slept through every nav class, Dietz,” Grandma said. “Don’t shit us. I can navigate.”

  “I didn’t grow up with access to a GPS. What do you think ghouls use?”

  “What, no ghoul has an interface?” Jones said.

  “Tech belongs to corps,” I said. I took the map from him and followed the lines of the terrain. “There’s some bootleg stuff, but not as much as you’d think. Got a direction for me, Vargas?”

  “North is this way, up that ridge.”

  My mother had taught me how to read a map when I was five. Most navigation we did while scavenging along the edges of corp territory was by dead reckoning. But a few times a year, my mother and I would head deeper into the jungle in search of treasures from the pre-corps world that others left untouched. The map she used was old—her grandmother’s, she said—made of some silky material that repelled water. You could shove the thing into your pocket like a handkerchief and pull it out again, crisp and unwrinkled, like new. Hold it in the sun for a while, and the contour lines and elevation markings even glowed in the dark. I loved that map. I wondered what happened to it after my mother died.

  This map wasn’t nearly as nice; plain paper, laminated, but clearly not going to glow after dark. We were in the shade of some big trees. The map was already tough to read. I oriented the map so the top faced the same way as the compass needle. I examined the ridge ahead of us.

  “That’s a spur,” I said, pointing at the feature. “Slopes down there on three sides, up on the one facing us. Can you locate any water?”

  Grandma pocketed the compass and forged off south a bit, following the slope. She paused at the edge of a little gully and picked a few violets. She tucked them into the place where her bayonet clipped to the end of her rifle.

  “You’re a weird one,” Jawbone said.

  “Enjoy yourself, kid,” Grandma said. “It’s not going to get much better.”

  Jones and Jawbone fanned out with her, one heading southeast, the other southwest.

  “Oh, hey!” Grandma yelled. “Stream down here.”

  “Found it,” I said, locating us on the map. “If we head over that stream for forty meters, we should reach a field. It’s marked here. Keep heading south. Vargas? Jones? You want to verify?”

  Grandma took a cursory look at the map and nodded. “I’m good with it. Big elevation change after that.”

  “Faster to go this way,” I said. “You’re in good shape, right? Jawbone?”

  “We have three days of this,” Grandma said. “Let’s pace ourselves.”

  “Don’t you want to win?” I said.

  “I’d like to survive.”

  “Hardly anybody dies during these,” Jawbone said.

  Jones said, “How do you know that?”

  “I looked it up on the knu before I enlisted,” Jawbone said. “Mostly, you get into trouble with water. We make sure we have water, we’re fine.”

  “You know they censor that shit on the knu,” Grandma said, “even for citizens.”

  “Could we talk and move?” I headed off south in the direction of the field.

  The others followed, still bantering. If nothing else, I’d be glad for the altitude change because all the huffing and puffing meant they wouldn’t talk so much.

  “Censorship is highly overrated,” Jones said. “It’s all done by AI. It looks for keywords. Don’t use the keywords, and your stream won’t get tagged for review.”

  “They randomize it, though,” Jawbone said. “Like when they check for terrorists at the roadblocks.”

  “Not as random as you think,” Jones said. “They say that to keep you on your toes. But one of my moms works in Corporate Security. She says they only access your streams if you do something bad, or you’re suspected of something.”

  “Literally anyone could be suspected of anything at any time,” Grandma said. “Some guy in security doesn’t like you, you’re fucked.”

  “You going to report us to your mom, Jones?” Jawbone snickered.

  We made it over the stream, which wasn’t much wider than I was tall, and headed across the field. The position was exposed, but we weren’t expecting live fire. As we made our way across, I realized the DI hadn’t said anything about messing with other teams. Would that invalidate your victory? Were other teams already talking about how they were going to trip up the others?

  I kept my mouth shut, but my eyes open. Every few kilometers we repositioned ourselves using the map. The terrain was tough. The heat and bugs were intense, despite our slicks and good boots. I pulled up the hood of my slick to get some relief and conserve water.

  We hiked all day, argued three times about position, and finally agreed to stop for a meal and an hour of sleep. The jungle had cooled enough that Jawbone insisted on snapping our pop-up heater on. It sat at the center of our little circle, pumping out heat but no light. We kept our headlamps on and divvied up dinner; flat MREs that you could fancy up by adding water, if you wanted, or choke down as-is. Either way, they weren’t great, which was why Jawbone called them Meals Rejected by the Enemy. I was pretty sure he’d looked that up on the knu too. It sounded too clever to be original.

  “These bugs are awful,” Jones said. “Bet there aren’t any bugs on Mars. Why aren’t we training in a desert?”

  “Put up your hood,” I said. “It helps.”

  “I’m not putting up my goddamn hood,” Jones said. “Makes me feel like a giant dick.”

  “That’s different than any other time?” I said.

  “Jealous, Dietz?”

  Grandma said, “We don’t all need to be a big dick like you, Jones.”

  Jones got up and headed away from the heat source. His headlamp swung with him, illuminating the big, wet trees and massive vines snaking through the understory. The whole place was crawling with bugs; his headlamp gave us a good view of the leaping, fluttering, stinging mess of them. I don’t generally mind bugs. I grew up with a goddamn pet cockroach, because it was one of the few things my mom wouldn’t try to kill and eat. But even this was a little much for me.

  “Where you going?” I asked.

  “Going to take a shit,” Jones said.

  “You’ve been pissing in your suit all day,” I said. “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is, I
want to take a shit like a goddamn human being.”

  Jones forged into the buzzing jungle, crashing and swearing as he went.

  “The reward is sounding less great,” Jawbone said. “We don’t sleep for three days so we can win sleeping in for two hours?”

  “Prove you can read a map and not die,” Grandma said. “You’ll pass.”

  “How do you know?” Jawbone said. “How many times you done this?”

  “This is my second time,” Grandma said.

  “Thought you were just old,” I said.

  “I’m twenty-five, you little shit. Signed up right after basic education. Made it five weeks in. Had some issues. Had to wash out.”

  “Why?” I said. “You bust open your head? Piss on somebody like Jones?”

  Grandma hugged her knees to her chest. We heard Jones’s noisy flatulence some ways distant. Him and his ass problems.

  “Feeling better?” Jawbone yelled.

  “Fuck you!” Jones, muffled.

  “Nothing like that. I couldn’t make the first drop,” Grandma said.

  “What, when they deploy you?” I said. “They turn you into light?”

  “Yeah. The drop. They tried to break me apart. It didn’t take.”

  “What’s that mean?” I said.

  “You haven’t done it yet,” she said. “Hard to explain until you do it.”

  “It didn’t kill you,” I said. “You look like you have all your limbs and shit.”

  “I didn’t break apart. Not once. Couldn’t lose a limb. Never was able to move them. Everybody else, well”—she pointed at the sky—“they got beamed up like superstars. And I stayed grounded. Just stood there. Boots in the dirt. Staring at the sky. Guess I’m too full of shit to bust up into light.”

  “I didn’t know that happened,” I said. “We’re all made of like, atoms and stuff. I mean, how could it not work? We’re all made the same.”

  “I’m not a fucking scientist,” Grandma said. “All that shit they shoot us up with? It changes us, like . . . your body, how it comes together. And they reformulated it the last couple years. They retested me and said it would work this time. I guess a lot of people don’t get it. Like, if you want to change the rules to bust people down and put them back together, you need to change human beings. You know? We’re all a bunch of guinea pigs. It’s why the corps love war. Gives them a rationale for putting investments into genetics.”

  Jones swore; we heard him bumbling around in the bush again.

  “The fuck is that?” he yelled.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “Stepped in shit.”

  “Your shit?”

  “No, goddamn. Some other shit. Fuck.”

  “It’s the jungle,” I said. “It’s full of shit.”

  Jones stomped back into the circle of heat, kicking at the undergrowth. “Fuck these Martian socialists,” he said, “and their fucking war.”

  “What’s the difference between a communist and a socialist?” Jawbone said.

  We waited, thinking there was a punch line.

  “You serious?” Jones said.

  “Sure. I mean, I know they’re bad, but people use the names the same.”

  “They both want you to labor for somebody else,” I said. “They want to bleed you out and feed you to lazy people.”

  “Think about it like this,” Jones said. “We’re here starving and sweating for the corp and shitting in the goddamn woods.”

  “You didn’t have to shit in the woods,” I said.

  Jones said, “And for every fifty push-ups you do, they go out there and feed some lazy ghoul who sits around pushing out babies and doing nothing, sucking off your labor.”

  “My family were ghouls,” I said. “We weren’t lazy.”

  “Well, sure,” Jones said. “You worked hard and got residency. Not all ghouls are lazy. Just, you know.”

  “Most of them?” I said.

  “They wouldn’t be ghouls, otherwise.”

  “What exactly did you do,” I asked, “to earn all your voting rights and health benefits before you signed up?”

  “Fuck you,” Jones said. “We earned everything.”

  “Didn’t your great-grandparents earn it?” Jawbone said. “I mean, Dietz has a point.”

  “I don’t have to pick through trash,” Jones said, “because my family did better than Dietz’s. So what? Good genetics. Right side of the Seed Wars. Life isn’t fair.”

  Grandma snorted. “But you’re trying to say it’s fair. That if everybody works hard, they get the same treatment you did. My dad was a resident, my mom a citizen. My dad always had to work harder. He didn’t have access to a lot of things she did. Neither did I. I have to earn citizen on my own.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Jones said. “Why are you ganging up on me?”

  “I was just asking,” Jawbone said. “I’m here to make citizen, too. And yeah, I sure deserve it more than a ghoul who isn’t here.”

  “I’m fine throwing ghouls at the war,” Jones said. “My mom—”

  “I’m tired of hearing about your fucking moms,” I said.

  We all had our headlamps off now, so I couldn’t see his expression.

  “We aren’t going to win this, Dietz,” Jones said. “Why don’t you fucking relax?”

  “The war, or the exercise?” I said. “Why are you really here, Jones? You get into trouble with the corp? Your moms kick you out of the house? Get your feelings hurt on the football field?”

  “What would you know?” he said. “I’m tired of your arrogant bullshit. You aren’t anyone special.”

  “Both of you shut up,” Grandma said. “You’re making me tired.” She rustled around in the undergrowth. Her sleeping mat squeaked against her slick.

  I leaned against the tree behind me, which I knew wasn’t the best idea. A big branch or a snake could come down on me, and then it was lights-out, no matter how great my training. Anger kept me awake despite my exhaustion. I wanted a shower and a real shit. I understood why Jones had hiked out into the bush to take a crap. You started to feel like a robot, all wrapped up in this suit, hauling around a big gun.

  I didn’t mean to nod off. I wanted to stay angry. I was thinking a lot of angry shit to keep myself up. I sure as hell wanted to get out from under the tree, but my body betrayed me. This superhero human-suit we were supposed to have . . . If we were all so great now, why did we get tired? Why did we get thirsty? The only reason they used us instead of robots is because we were cheaper. They’d send us in before they sent in some drone army. I’d learn later that Martians were still more skittish about killing people than drones, too.

  Go figure.

  I came awake to Grandma shaking me. It was still dark, but the sounds around us had changed. Some animal whoop-whooped in the darkness.

  “Another squad just passed us,” Grandma said. “Jones went ahead to lay a trap for them.”

  “A . . . trap?” I said. “They’ll hear him coming. He’s as graceful as a goddamn bear.”

  “He turned on his suit’s dampener.”

  “Why? Shit.”

  “You said you wanted to win.”

  “Where’s the map?”

  “He took it.”

  “You got the compass?”

  “He took that too. I fell asleep. Jawbone filled me in.”

  “Goddammit, Jawbone,” I said.

  “You wanted to win!” Jawbone said.

  I tried to picture the map. “There’s a ridge south of us. That’s what we were going to have to hump up next. Going around would take us five more kilometers. We’d have lost a lot of time.”

  “I’m tired, Dietz,” Jawbone said. “Let’s wait until he comes back.”

  “We aren’t here to fight one another. We’re not the enemy.”

  “You’re going out in the dark?” Jawbone said.

  “You think being a soldier was going to be a party?” I said. I sounded like the DI.

  We packed our gear and headed
in the direction Jawbone had seen the other squad go. They had turned on their headlamps and they were a good quarter kilometer ahead, working their way up the ridge.

  “Which team?” I asked.

  “Muñoz is leading,” Grandma said.

  Of course. I yelled, “Muñoz!” No answer. No change in the movement of the lights. “Muñoz! Watch out for Jones up there!”

  “Why you give him up?” Grandma asked.

  “Because we’re not here to eat one another. I want to win fair.”

  “War isn’t fair, Dietz,” Grandma said.

  “It’s an exercise.”

  I went toward the headlamps. Jawbone and Grandma followed. If Muñoz was leading us the wrong way, fine. But I figured Jones was going to be waiting to see those lights. Muñoz’s squad didn’t slow down. I’d ask why they kept the headlamps on, but like I said—it was an exercise. It wasn’t some covert operation.

  The jungle around us was heavy and wet. Dark, so dark. When you grow up just outside some big city, like I did, you don’t appreciate the dark. You don’t get a real grasp on it. Darkness is what happens when you close your eyes. It’s something you choose, not something thrust upon you. But out here, the darkness was absolute. Our headlamps seared through it; lightning during a storm.

  I slid into the gully, not waiting for the others. The team ahead picked up their pace. They couldn’t have had any time to sleep. I wondered what was keeping them upright; Muñoz, probably, poking them all with a sharp stick.

  “Goddammit!” somebody yelled from the squad. Their lights swung wildly. Sound of broken branches, snapping leaves.

  The ground under me went soft. Mud slurped around my boots. I grabbed hold of a thick vine. It broke in my hand. It was rigid enough to hook another one. I pulled myself out using it. Further on, the mud thinned to water. I sank waist deep. I shuddered, thinking about parasites and snapping, biting fish and snakes. My rifle wasn’t going to be much use against them. I hoped the slick ate leeches.