Orphanage

by Robert Buettner

  Cheery news.

  Munchkin sobbed.

  “Sir—”

  “I know. See to your troops. Out.”

  I switched the BAM to display the vitals of my platoon before my eye. Sixteen solid, green bars showed survivors. Munchkin’s bar was green, but blinking for wounded. There were nine blinking red crosses. The corporal from Chicago was a red blinker.

  As the night wind kicked up, we withdrew to a Hibble-sanitized cave behind our sector. Moving Munchkin made no sense, but she couldn’t stay outside. I shot her up with morphine and carried her fireman-style across my shoulder. She never let out a peep until she lost consciousness. Then she screamed with every step I took.

  I may have slept that night, huddled against Munchkin in frigid blackness while unbreathable wind howled. But mostly I half dreamed of dead people. Mom. Walter Loren-zen, who gave his life for me but never won a medal for his mother. Wire, the sergeant major. Pooh. The loader with the hole in his head, whose name I didn’t even know. Eight other GIs I only knew as blinking red crosses who had just died because I hadn’t known how to save them.

  At first light, such as it was on Ganymede, the gale abated and the Slugs came again. This time artillery cracked them hard, miles out on the dust plain.

  I pulled triple duty, commanding, firing our machine gun, and loading it myself. The closest remaining Slug took a fatal round a hundred yards downrange from me.

  But we still lost three more men. Little by little the Slugs would wear us down. I ached from toenails to scalp follicles. I radioed my report to HQ, then cleaned the gun. I could strip it in seconds, normally, but it took me three minutes.

  What was the point of continuing? Eventually, the Slugs would overrun us. Home was a pinprick in the sky. The woman I had hoped to spend my life with was gone. The woman who had become my sister lay dying. I was cold and hungry and alone. Next assault, I would fire up all my ammunition but, when the Slugs overran us, as they eventually would, I would just relax and let it happen. I was just too tired to fight anymore.

  Captain Jacowicz had said something to me a million years ago. That commanders measured their failures in the letters they wrote about soldiers killed under their command.

  At Gettysburg, the Confederate General George Pickett hurled his division against a Union strong point. Pickett’s Charge became synonymous with futile slaughter. Pickett returned to Confederate lines, dazed. His commander, Lee, told him, “General, see to your division!” Pickett responded, “General, I have no division.”

  Now I understood Pickett and Jacowicz, perfectly.

  After I walked our line and made sure my guys were fed, I dragged back to the cave and sat cross-legged next to Munchkin. I spooned lukewarm broth into her, while my remaining troops cleaned weapons in their trench-line positions. The morphine eased her pain but she had sunk overnight. Without more help than I could give, she had hours. She drifted back to unconsciousness.

  “Major Wander?”

  I looked up to see a medic, out of breath, his rifle slung. He saluted, and I returned it. That still seemed unnatural.

  “Finally. She needs help. And I’m just an acting lieutenant, not a major.”

  Confusion flashed across his face. “Not anymore, sir. You have Third Battalion of the Second, now, Major.”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday was bad, sir. Lots of field promotions.”

  I knelt beside her and peeled back her jacket, exposing the monitor leads for the medic to plug in his field-analysis reader. “Look. Thanks for the news. You’re a medic. She needs a medic. Go to work.”

  “You don’t understand, sir. I’m a medic, but I’m here as a runner. Radios went out after you reported this morning. My orders are to escort you back to HQ. Without delay.”

  My head spun. Insanity spread each moment.

  “Sure. We’ll take her along.”

  He looked down at her. “Moving her will kill her.”

  I had lost twelve soldiers. I wouldn’t lose Munchkin. “Then I’m staying with her.”

  He fingered his slung rifle. “General Cobb issued my orders, himself. If I have to take you back at gunpoint—”

  Purple images of Mom and Walter Lorenzen and Pooh Hart and dead soldiers I never even knew ached in my head like tumors.

  I snatched up my rifle and thrust the muzzle against his forehead. “Gunpoint? How’s this for gunpoint?” I pointed my trembling free hand at Munchkin. “You save her life, or I blow your brains out.”

  The medic’s breath caught in his throat.

  I thumbed off the safety. “She’s my family. Her husband is my best friend. He’s up in orbit, now, expecting me to keep her safe. You understand that? I won’t let my family die. Third Battalion of the Second can go to hell.”

  He stood as still as marble, except for his hands, which uncoiled the lead wires from his field-analysis reader while his eyes focused on the gun muzzle pressed in his flesh. “Sure, sir. Let’s get a read on her.”

  I pulled the muzzle back as he knelt and fastened the lead wires to her with shaking fingers.

  We waited until the reader beeped and he tilted its screen toward his eyes. “Blood loss. Mild infection. The round shattered her clavicle. But that won’t kill her. Overall, critical but stable. Somebody took good care of her. Baby’s fine, too.”

  “Baby?”

  Munchkin turned her face away, and I knew it was true. It was so incomprehensible I wasn’t even sure whether it violated regulations.

  “Munchkin, what about after-pills?” Unwanted pregnancy disappeared courtesy of Squibb twenty years ago.

  “I’ve got two more months for that. I’m mission-capable.”

  “You’ve been puking every morning.”

  “So have a lot of men.” She was right. The army tolerated tobacco smokers’ morning hacking. She could do her job, now. In a month, if need be, a pill could make her body resorb the fetus.

  “But why?”

  “If I lose Metzger…”

  If I could make some part of Pooh or of Walter, of my family, survive, would I break a regulation? Of course. I had just nearly killed a medic to save Munchkin.

  “Metzger’ll be fine.” I wasn’t shining her on. The Slugs had no antiaircraft. The Numbers were right. Metzger was safe. But The Numbers said Pooh should be alive, too.

  “Jason?” Munchkin’s hand gripped my sleeve. “You need to go. It’s what you signed up for. I’ll be fine. And if I’m not, it’s what I signed up for.”

  Neither of us blinked. It was also what Walter Lorenzen and Pooh and twelve dead soldiers who had died under my command had signed up for. They all died try-ing. I could do no less. I wouldn’t leave Munchkin for the flag or the UN or to kill Slugs. I would leave for Walter and for Pooh and, in the end, for Munchkin herself, even with child.

  “Does Metzger know?”

  She shook her head.

  I shouldered my pack, then said to the medic, “I’m ready. And you can write me up when we get back to HQ.”

  He shrugged. “Long as you’re going, I don’t need to leave. Plenty of work here besides her. She’s not out of the woods, but I’ve got tricks in my bag. No soldier writes up another soldier. We’re all family.”

  I bent and kissed Munchkin’s forehead. “Thank you.”

  I turned and loped back toward HQ. As I ran, I peered out across the plain. A black shadow line bigger than yesterday’s formed on the horizon.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I ran through our mostly empty trenches toward HQ, listening as Hope’s bombs began pattering like raindrops out on the plain. Then they stopped.

  I looked up, steadying my helmet with one hand. Hope’s silver dot floated overhead, clearly still in firing position. Odd.

  Minutes later, the Slug boom-boom-boom echoed off the crags. The Slugs had advanced within small-arms range but Hope had barely fired a shot.

  As I ran, I wondered whether I would really have shot the medic. I wondered whether I should tell Metzger that M
unchkin carried their child. I wondered how badly we were hurt that a specialist fourth class commanded a battalion after two days’ battle. Three leg-infantry companies and a weapons company made a battalion. If the battalion was at full strength, which, of course, it wasn’t, eight hundred soldiers would live and die on my orders.

  By the time I rounded a bend, and HQ came in sight, battle sounds had died. We had beaten back the Slugs again. Since I’d left, the engineers had rigged a roof, of sorts, over HQ and topped it with loose rock. Antennae sprouted from it, and below I saw soldiers move.

  I got closer and realized that the movement was the hauling of wounded. Slug carcasses draped HQ’s parapet by the hundreds. If the Slugs had got this close to our HQ, the next assault would be the last.

  I ducked under HQ’s low ceiling and waited for my goggles to adjust. The first person I recognized was Howard Hibble. He sat with his back against the trench wall, a rifle across his bony knees. Its stock had shattered. Howard never touched rifles if he could help it.

  A medic knelt beside him, dressing Howard’s bloody forearm.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  The medic tied the dressing. “Slugs breached HQ. Major here mowed down fifty. Clubbed the last two with his rifle butt.”

  I almost smiled. “Holy Moly, Howard!”

  He rolled his head back against the rock. “I’d kill for a cigarette.”

  “You still think they’re a hive entity?”

  He nodded, slowly.

  An orderly entered the room, saw me, and snapped to attention, head cocked below the ceiling. “Sir!”

  “I’m Wander.”

  “General Cobb said to bring you to him as soon as you arrived.”

  The orderly led me deeper into the warren of roofed trenches that had become HQ since I’d left. Unit radios squawked. Litters of wounded were ranked along trench walls. Too many were no longer wounded.

  He handed me off to another orderly, who led me to the wide trench that formed GEF’s nerve center. The roof had been breached. Dead Slug warriors slumped in the opening. Don’t mess with Howard Hibble.

  “I’m Wander. New CO of the Third of the Second.”

  “No, sir. You’re not.”

  “What?” Rage surged in me. I’d abandoned Munchkin for nothing?

  “Jason!”

  I turned. General Cobb lay on a litter, a pressure dressing banded across his eyes with blood-soaked gauze strips. I knelt beside him. He groped for my arm, frowned as his fingers slipped in blood. “You hit bad, son?”

  I looked down. A metal splinter jutted from my bicep. I hadn’t even noticed. “No, sir. You—”

  He shook his head. “I can’t command what I can’t see.”

  Somebody cried for her mother. I looked around, then back.

  “You’ve done okay with your platoon. You’ll do okay with the division.”

  My ears rang. Not just from the cacophony around us. I was supposed to play one poker hand for the future of the human race? I didn’t even know the rules. And I had no cards. “Division, sir? I never. I can’t.”

  “You will. Hell, it’s not much more than a battalion left, now.” He reached to his collar, fumbled with his stars, then pressed them into my palm.

  “Coffee, General?” A private held out a canteen cup in a shaking hand. To me.

  I shook my head, pointed to General Cobb. The kid took his hand, pressed the cup into it. Then the private asked me, “What do you need, sir?”

  A fucking clue, for starters. I sat still and breathed.

  General Cobb reached up, groped for the back of my head. He tugged my ear down to his lips and whispered. “Jason, you’re in command! The one thing you can’t do is nothing. Do something, even if it’s wrong!”

  I turned to the private as I pinned the stars to my collar. “Get me staff. Now.” I needed information.

  “Sir, there hasn’t been a live staff officer for twelve hours.”

  Somewhere a wounded man screamed.

  Of course there was no staff. Why did I think an acting lieutenant had been jumped over colonels, majors, and captains? They were dead.

  “You have any idea what our strength is?”

  “Eight hundred available for duty, sir.”

  “What about the other brigades?”

  “All brigades. Eight hundred left in the whole GEF, sir.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “It is.”

  We needed fire support more than ever.

  “How do I talk to Hope?”

  He pointed across the room, at a radio console on a folding table.

  “Why isn’t somebody manning that?” I asked.

  He stepped to it and turned it, displaying a line of holes across the back. “It got shot up today.”

  No wonder we’d lost fire support. I would have blamed the ship’s computers.

  “Nobody’s talked to Hope in hours. Except the cooks, of course.”

  “What?”

  He pointed across the room. A corporal wearing mess fatigues sat at a radio, talking.

  “They been sending up menu orders, just in case Hope can get some hots down to us. You know how General Cobb feels about feeding the troops.”

  The firepower to destroy a planet hung in orbit above us, and the only working uplink was being used to order stew.

  I jumped up, snatched the corporal’s mike, and spoke. “Who is this?”

  “Who is this! ‘Cause this is Senior Mess Steward Anthony Garcia and I got work to do! So get off my net, dick brain.”

  “This is Division Commander Wander, Garcia. It’s my net. If you want to stay senior anything, you patch me through to Commodore Metzger on the bridge. Now.”

  Silence. While I waited for the patch, Howard Hibble and Ari came in, along with a handful of surviving junior officers. Except for Howard, their combined age matched a Scout troop.

  Ari said, “Heard you got a small promotion. Sir.”

  I nodded, then held up a finger as Metzger’s voice came through. “Jason? You’re commanding?” He didn’t have to say what he meant. If I was in charge, things had gone to unimaginable shit down here.

  “I’m commanding. How’s fire support? ‘Cause we’re hurting down here.”

  Static roared. The mess uplink had been the general’s indulgence. It was an obsolete radio with a line-of-sight antenna. We’d have to wait for Hope’s next orbit to talk again.

  I turned to Howard. “How do we stop them, Howard? Because even if Hope can bomb the Slugs back for another attack, eventually she runs out of bombs.”

  Howard sucked his teeth. “It. Stop it. There’s probably a single central point, a brain if you will. It breeds troops there, thinks there, fabricates Projectiles there.”

  “You know this?”

  “Wild-ass educated guess.”

  A lieutenant, real, not day-old like I had been, seesawed his hand. The jerk who had been impatient with Ari when we assaulted that cave. “More likely they decentralized their command and control structure. They’re not dumb.”

  Howard shrugged. “Never said it was dumb. Just different.”

  I looked around at all of them as we hunched under the low ceiling. “Howard guessed right about the frontal assault. Anybody got a better guess?”

  Feet shifted, but no one spoke.

  I slapped my palms on my thighs. “Okay. We need to find this brain. Fast.”

  The lieutenant spoke again. “If we had choppers… or if we had time to get patrols out across the dust bowl…”

  I looked at Ari. “Jeeb.”

  Ari nodded.

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Sir, doctrine is we keep the TOT tight to the division. It’s too valuable for patrolling.”

  Adrenaline surged in me. This lieutenant was probably incredulous that I got jumped over him. My spec-four patch remained sewn on my sleeve, even if my collar brass said different. The last thing I needed now was attitude from somebody who was supposed to be working for me. And I was the by-God di
vision commander! “Lieutenant—!”

  He winced.

  I bit my tongue. The medic I had nearly killed an hour ago had said it. Ord had fried to teach me an eternity ago. This lieutenant had been through hell. We all had. Together. We were family.

  Ari nodded, again. “He’s right, Jason. About doctrine.”

  Why conserve Jeeb? So he would be here to see the last of us die on this rock? “Thanks for the perspective, Lieutenant. But doctrine got us in this mess. Ari, what can Jeeb look for?”

  Ari walked us over to the suitcase-size holotank that showed us what he saw through Jeeb’s eyes.

  He pointed. “These depressions at the crater rim are the staging area where the Slugs formed up. This”—Ari drew his finger along parallel lines in the dust—“is a trail back to somewhere.”

  We watched the view change as Jeeb zoomed down and shot along scant feet above Ganymede’s surface. Miles flew by, then the dust trails disappeared. Jeeb stopped and hairpin-turned, then the view was right at ground level. I imagined Jeeb picking his way across Ganymede on six legs.

  “They crossed solid rock, here, no tracks.”

  “So?”

  Ari closed his eyes and made a scooping motion with one hand. “Sampling. Jeeb’s taking the rock’s temperature.” Ari opened his eyes. “Okay. We switched to passive infrared. The Slugs left a trail a quarter degree warmer when they crossed this rock pile.”

  The infrared holo shimmered, not like the visual-spectrum image. But the Slug trails crossed the rock, as obvious as pale smoke. Jeeb crawled slowly as he followed them.

  “Sir?” Lieutenant Negative broke in.

  I nodded and he continued. “If the TOT doesn’t find something before nightfall, the storm and the temperature drop will wipe out any traces. We’ll be nowhere.”

  I shot Ari a glance.

  He said, “Lieutenant’s right, Ja—sir.”

  If I’d bitten Lieutenant Negative’s head off the minute before, he would never have offered the second bit of advice. The remaining eight hundred of us wouldn’t last to try again after the following day’s attack. It was now or never.

  “So, what do we do, Ari?”

  “If Jeeb switches from passive infrared to active, he can track while he’s flying.” Ari’s face darkened. “But it’s like shining a searchlight. He gives himself away to any observer who sees in the infrared spectrum.”