I: I’m not asking you about Norway.
S: Stockholm, Sweden. You know, that’s interesting, an interesting slip. Was it a slip, or were you testing me? I’ve often wondered what it must be like here, living through the final days of the war. I bet it’s overwhelming to see so many dead and dying, to see your whole way of life destroyed. Sweden is where Stockholm used to be. Most of it’s still there. You know why it’s not all under water like so many old capitalist strongholds? Much of the North is still rising. It was glaciated so long that the land beneath those glaciers was compressed for hundreds of thousands of years. Imagine the earth there is like a piece of bread that’s been squashed. Then the pressure eases when the ice melts. Every year the land rises about a centimeter. Since the last ice age, there’s one stretch of Swedish coastline that’s risen over three hundred meters. There are ancient settlements that used to sit up against the sea. Now they’re stranded far inland. An entire geography completely transformed in a relatively short amount of time. . . . Much like what happened in the Pacific as the oceans rose a century ago. The unrest that caused . . . well, that got us the Seed Wars and the Corporate Wars and the Big Six. There’s a fascinating course of study on the rise of fascist states that posits that they become more popular the more people fear death. And really, most corporate states are fascist, though they would have you believe they’re oligarchies, ruled by tables full of rich old people with humanity’s best interests at heart. The more fearful and out of control we feel, the more we look to some big man on a horse or a tank or a beam of light to save us. The survival of truly egalitarian societies requires—if not an absence of fear—then a harnessing of it. Consider—
I: Why were you in Saint Petersburg?
(SILENCE 17 seconds)
S: Why don’t you tell me, Sergeant?
I: Let us establish the facts. You planted an incendiary device at the Taleon Imperial Hotel in Saint Petersburg. We know it was you because you stood on a vehicle outside of the hotel as your device went off and called for the TenisanaCom CEO by name. If he had not been in residence at the hotel, you and I certainly wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d have been shot on the spot. But he was. And that leads me to believe you got some intelligence from someone on my team. There’s no one else who knew he was staying there. I’d think you meant to get caught, but you ran from my security forces and we had to root you out of an abandoned cellar. Why announce yourself and then run? Who sent you there?
S: I almost called for you, instead, but I figured you were less important. Say his name, though, and you’ll come after, like his little dog. I enjoyed yelling “Papa Martin!” which is such a textbook “Hey, let’s try to have the supreme leader sound benevolent” name that I laughed when I first heard it. Was his nickname your idea?
I: On the outskirts of the city, we found an abandoned Martian shuttle with your DNA and fingerprints all over it. What are we to make of that?
S: I don’t know. You’re the one in intelligence.
I: So you are Martian? The Martians sent you to Saint Petersburg to intimidate our CEO? Or plant some other contagion? We suspect you’re the one who set the artillery on fire outside the city as well. You know that fire spread? Innocent people lost their homes. We don’t have the resources to put out such a blaze at this point in the war. Wanton destruction. A dramatic act of arson. By order of Mars?
S: Oh, now, I didn’t say that, did I, Sergeant?
(SILENCE: 05 seconds)
I: Your incendiary device had a name scrawled on it. Three letters. “Hal.” What was that supposed to mean?
S: Just a little joke. You remember jokes, Sergeant? I always expected you to be better at this. Maybe all those years on Mars taught me something besides geography and history. Did you know there isn’t any banned media on Mars? Of course, they only allowed me books and audio recordings, no immersives. Books, imagine that! Paper, even. How decadent. You can get a lot of reading done, sitting in a ten by twelve cell.
I: You were a prisoner? Why? Deserter? Is that why you left? You were escaping to Saint Petersburg? Why choose that city, and why intimidate our CEO? When exactly did you arrive in Saint Petersburg?
S: Exactly when I was supposed to.
I: End interview.
(END RECORDING #1)
8.
I’d been anticipating my first de-corporealizing drop from the very beginning. Or maybe the end.
It happened our fifth week of mandatory training. After hearing from Grandma about how she wasn’t able to get deployed, I admit I was surprised they waited so long to get the drop over with. Wouldn’t they want to know early if we could handle it?
That first drop, the training drop . . . they brought us all out to some field and made us stand an arm’s length apart. Told us to be still and find a point to concentrate on and begin a meditation. We got a list of the rules, and there were a lot. Some examples:
1. Don’t move once the drop sequencing starts.
2. Don’t take off your helmet.
3. Don’t use the coms until you have fully corporealized at your final location.
4. Respond to medical team requests immediately on returning to the base drop point.
They even had a sequence you had to run through, giving your name and rank, showing both your hands, reading a flashing number they projected on an LED-film display on the field, all sorts of tricks the medics used to make sure you came back right.
I remember all that instruction. I remember getting in formation, and starting to shake, worrying I wasn’t going to come back right no matter how well I stuck to the rules. . . .
And then . . .
Heat and noise, my own breath loud in my ears, the sound of my beating heart.
It was just a test drop, but they landed us into some shit. I remember gasping for air that wasn’t there, because my lungs hadn’t come together yet. Two recruits started coalescing over the same spot; they were saved at the last minute by some tech, no doubt, who redirected one of them and put her somewhere else before they had fully merged. That near miss scared me badly. I was down on my knees for a long time. Then . . . a missing chunk of my memory. Just more heat and noise. I heard after that they were shooting live rounds over our heads and setting off artillery. Maybe it was good I couldn’t recall much of it.
We all had to do forty-eight hours of quarantine so they could make sure we were mentally and physically fit afterward. They drew a lot of blood. Ran us through cognitive exercises. Physical fitness tests. One kid didn’t make it—she came back wrong when we dropped back to base, her head jutting out of the center of her torso. Another recruit couldn’t pass the cognitive or physical tests, after. He got discharged. Latrines all the way down, no doubt.
I may not remember much about that drop, but at least I’d survived it intact.
We graduated in week six. One hundred and nineteen of the one hundred and thirty-seven who first signed up made it out the other side. We had the day of graduation to get black-out drunk, just like Muñoz wanted.
Then we got our assignments.
The orders came in, and they scattered us. I got posted to some infrastructure unit in La Paz, doing what looked a lot to me like desk duty. Muñoz and Jones got posted to Isla Riesco, in an active, front-facing platoon that was getting immediately sent to the Martian front.
When I challenged my post, the posting officer said, “Your numbers came back bad after your drop.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means the logistics geeks said you can’t handle drops.”
“They didn’t say anything during training.”
“You scored fine. It’s just something that happens. Not everybody is cut out for getting burst apart, you get me?”
“I’m fitter than damn near anybody here.”
“I don’t make the rules. I enforce them. Just keep requesting a transfer. We’re . . . taking some losses. There may be a place that opens up despite your rating. It’s not the worst rating I’
ve seen.”
“Can I see the file?”
“You’re asking for classified corp intel. Sorry.”
Maybe it’s good I didn’t remember much about that training drop, but I’d have liked to have a better idea about why I’d been disqualified.
I spent my first six months as an enlisted soldier rebuilding infrastructure taken out by the Martians. I traveled all over Tene-Silvia, and even did a couple joint operations with Evecom and ShinHana. Muñoz and Jones kept in touch, when they could. A lot of their drops were classified, and they were stuck in quarantine often. It wasn’t just the lack of combat that bothered me—I’d trained for combat, not ditch digging; it was the loneliness. I got on all right with my platoon, but knowing Jones and Muñoz were at the front and I wasn’t the one covering their asses started to get to me. I sent in a new transfer request every six weeks, right after command denied the last one.
“I didn’t come out here to do data entry,” I told Muñoz once when we both had access to time with the com. Her noisy platoon hooted and hollered in the background. I got the impression they’d come back from some great victory.
“You’ve got a fast line to citizenship, though,” Muñoz said. “And a real career. Being front line is bullshit. They treat you like meat.”
“I still think your other numbers were good. You aced every class.”
“Doesn’t fucking matter,” she said, and sighed. I saw a familiar face behind her.
“Is that Jawbone?” I said.
He waved. “Hey, Dietz!”
“Shit, you have Jawbone and Jones?”
“Lucky me,” Muñoz said. “They’re the only ones stupid enough to get rolled into my platoon. He just got transferred yesterday. When you coming?”
“I’ll get there.”
I followed my other friends during that time—Andria and Rubem sent the most messages, mostly Andria. Andria got promoted on her first drop, and brought back a fistful of Martian soil. She tossed it into a water bottle and drank it while making a recording for me.
“Tasty!” she announced in front of her gawking platoon, but the look on her face gave it away. I imagined she got sick right after.
I tried to find the others who had signed up ahead of me that day at the recruiting office. I knew Garcia and Orville had dropped out. And I lost track of Marseille and Timon. If they were alive, they were difficult to find. I suppose I could have requested to transfer to Andria’s platoon instead of Muñoz’s, but it wasn’t the same. There’s something that happens to you when you’ve been through the most grueling ordeal of your life with somebody. It’s like you’re closer than blood, after. Closer than family. There’s nothing else like it.
The war would have gone a lot differently if I hadn’t pursued a place at the front line. I know that. But when my persistence finally paid off, all I thought about was myself. The war I would experience. The war I wanted to fight next to people I trusted. Even if, like Jones, sometimes they were assholes.
After six months of transfer requests, I finally got approved to join Muñoz’s platoon. I felt like I’d won some kind of life lottery. But it didn’t turn out the way I hoped, for me or for Muñoz.
Life never does.
When I got to Isla Riesco, the CO assigned me to Muñoz’s team. Muñoz was squad leader for one of the three fire teams under our CO. Jones and Jawbone were both on her team, along with a lanky woman called Squib who had a loud, brassy voice and Xs tattooed on her knuckles.
“You request me?” I asked Muñoz as I threw my stuff into my rack. Squib sat next to Muñoz on the bed across from mine, polishing her boots. Jones and Jawbone were out checking messages.
“Bad drop,” Muñoz said. “They gave us six fresh recruits to make up for people we lost. None of them have seen combat. At least I knew you were a pretty good shot.” Her eyes were already different; she had that faraway look that people get when they’re reliving the past. “That’s probably why they finally agreed to the transfer. All my idea.”
Squib said, “More fodder for the grinder.”
“I came to fight.”
“I give this one two drops,” Squib said.
“What’s that?” I said.
“She means two drops before you’re killed,” Muñoz said. “We’ve dropped seven times already.”
“Twenty-eight, for me,” Squib said.
“Why aren’t you squad leader then?” I said.
Squib showed her teeth. Her left incisor was missing. “I’m not so good with people.”
“And we’ve lost a lot of good people,” Muñoz said. “You remember Moskowitz? From mandatory? Dead first drop. Corporealized right inside a goddamn atmo plant on Mars. Can you believe that?”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Not your fault. You ready for this? I mean, you could be repairing some bridges.”
“Rather be here. Don’t get sad about me blowing up, Muñoz.”
“Never,” she said, and there was the grin I remembered. “You hungry?”
Muñoz introduced me to some others in the platoon. Prakash was a lean young woman with a quick laugh and easy smile; like Muñoz, she was little. A bigger guy, Herrera, was a specialist on another squad.
“And Tanaka is that handsome prick over there,” Muñoz said, pointing him out in the cafeteria. He sat with who I figured was his squad. I didn’t usually agree with Muñoz and her taste in men, but thought I might be convinced this time. Tanaka was tall and lean and had a kind face that I didn’t expect to see on a soldier leading a fire team. A rough beard covered his face, and he had grown out his sandy hair.
“He get flak for the hair?” I said.
“Naw,” Muñoz said. “He lost a bet.”
The CO of our platoon was Second Lieutenant Valenzuela, but we just called her the CO. She was one of those squat, wide linebacker types who I imagined could bench press the lot of us one-handed. For all her swagger, she wasn’t much taller than Muñoz. She had one of those ageless faces all the higher-ranking soldiers had; she could have been thirty or fifty—neither would have surprised me.
“Today some of you will see the enemy for the first time on the field,” the CO said during our first mission briefing. I tried not to get cocky about it. I figured I’d go into everything like it was a training exercise. I wasn’t going to get busted apart and see only darkness. Not this time. I wasn’t going to go nuts or shit myself.
“You will probably shit yourself,” the CO said. “That’s fine. Your slick will eat it up. This is a Mars recon mission. You are acting as backup to the main mission. That means you don’t shoot shit unless I tell you to shoot it. Before you start hyperventilating, yes, you can breathe air on Mars. But the reason I’ve had you in the tanks is because it’s like breathing air on top of goddamn Everest. Keep your oxygen line clear, and use it. Don’t be a goddamn hero. Gravity will fuck with you there. You’ve all had the training. I suggest you use it. Don’t go shooting one another’s heads off. Too many goddamn rookies in this bunch.”
Jones was out with a minor injury: a broken leg from crashing down the stairs drunk while celebrating my arrival and imminent first combat drop. Our med unit was good enough that he’d only be off his feet for a few days. Most bone breaks in training had healed cleanly in the same time frame.
“Go kill a Martian for me,” he said from his bunk. He was settled in with some immersives and a long list of rehabilitation exercises. I had never seen him look so anxious about what was going to amount to three days of light duty.
The CO swapped in a seasoned soldier, Specialist Abascal, from another unit and integrated her into our squad. Abascal had almost three years of service. I figured she was about Grandma’s age, maybe midtwenties. Though they looked nothing alike, Abascal’s presence on the team reminded me of the firefight that night during mandatory training. I watched the back of her head as we got in formation; she had tattooed two dueling snakes onto her shaved skull.
“You look long enough, they’ll bite,” Abascal said
, without turning.
“It’s good work,” I said.
“I’ve got more.”
“Really?”
“Ask me, after.”
Shit, I thought. She was going to be trouble.
They crammed us into a drop ship. For a while I thought maybe we were going to go in that way, even knowing better. I sweated bad in my suit.
“Why they shuttling us?” I asked Muñoz. “Defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
Muñoz grimaced. “It’s in case something goes wrong. They fuck up the sequencing, it’s like a nuclear bomb goes off.”
“Red mist.”
“Nah,” Squib said, rubbing at some invisible blemish on her rifle, “ain’t enough of you left even for that.”
The drop ship vomited us at the launch point.
We ran off the ship and into the middle of a rocky beach. The ride hadn’t been long, so we couldn’t have gone far, but the sky was brighter, and the air was different. Cleaner, maybe. Cold arctic air, like something straight from an oxygen bar. I wondered if we were down at one of the bases in Antarctica. I knew three of the corps had territory down there. Last I heard, that was where Andria and Rubem were deployed.
They got us into formation. The CO held up her arm and gave the signal that we were about to break apart.
My stomach seized. I forced myself to focus on a bare-knuckled tree on the horizon, tried to center myself like they taught us. Think about nothing. My stomach churned. The air burned. I was aware that the weapon in my arms was made to murder people.
The Light Brigade Page 7
