Obligations

by Kevin Ikenberry

  Aliza opened her eyes anew and saw a few other women moving in the tent. She sat up and shrugged the blanket away. There was enough light that she could see the numbers on her arm as if to remind her she might be in the distant future, and on a planet very far from home, but she was who she was and the others, especially the soldiers, weren’t to be trusted any more than necessary.

  Her head snapped up at the sound of a loud, almost purring noise, and she smiled. Like her, the whinaalani were early risers. While the animals weren’t horses, they were enough of an analog to settle their roles in her mind and inspire her to get out of her bunk every day. The whinnies were intelligent and docile when mounted, except for when the locals attempted to do so. Then they seemed agitated and almost angry. As she watched the creatures in the makeshift paddock, they were playful and wild. She’d grown up with horses and learned dressage from a very young age, so being around the whinaalani was comforting. And the memories they evoked, both at home before Dachau, and her life after it, were not unpleasant. Not at all.

  There was a crunch of footsteps outside, and the door flap was pushed slightly, and modestly, to one side. A man, silhouetted against the compound outside, spoke softly. “Miss Turan?”

  Aliza replied, “Yes?”

  “Ma’am? Captain Moorefield needs to see you. As soon as you can, please?”

  “I’ll be right there,” she said. The man ducked away from the door, pulling both flaps discreetly closed.

  Since her awakening four weeks before, she had had exactly two conversations with the overall officer in charge: Major Rodger Murphy. He had taken a keen and genuine interest in her, and once she had been convinced that the improbable future was real, she met with the chief medical officer, Doctor Schoffel, to go over her medical history. When that had concluded, Major Murphy had stopped in to speak with her a second time and affirm that she had a place among the Lost Soldiers. It wasn’t much, he said, but it was better than the alternative. Murphy had been kind but also very frank, evidence that he understood her from the outset. Captain Moorefield? Not so much.

  Aliza dressed quickly, tugging on the boots that somehow weren’t her size but didn’t hurt her feet, and left the tent. Her mind drifted back to Murphy’s last conversation with her. He’d asked several details about her life, especially after leaving Dachau. Where had she been? What had she done? What was her last memory? He had listened intently to the last story, even smiling at one point when there was nothing particularly happy about it. She’d asked him why he was smiling, and he’d said it would be something the Lost Soldiers could use in the very near future.

  Apparently, that near future is now.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  Dawn broke in a spectacular display of purples and orange like nothing Bo had ever seen on Earth. He caught himself staring to the east, into the almost blinding beauty, and forced himself to look away. Mounted on Scout, he’d intended to move around the paddock and check on everyone—what an old brigade commander had called MBWA, or management by wandering around. In his service, especially during his time attached to the United Nations effort in Somalia, the technique had proven invaluable for seeing how work was being done. Around him, the soldiers familiar with their mounts were helping the rookies with the tack for riding whinnies. The long cold sleep hadn’t affected the ability of those who had ridden on Earth, and it turned out they were solid examples and adequate teachers. They handled the job with the aplomb of old soldiers teaching the new recruits, probably what each of them had experienced in their first days wearing a uniform. In the paddock, the din of the new recruits’ nervous activity contrasted with the focus and quiet resolve of the experienced riders. Combined, the feeling was electric and excitement coursed through Bo’s veins in a way it never had before other mounted patrols. Until, that is, he saw Aliza Turan walk into the paddock with a bright smile on her face.

  Her dark hair tied into a ponytail, Aliza wore the green olive drab fatigue pants the Vietnam veterans knew all too well. Her black, polished boots had straps instead of laces, exactly like his own. Where she’d gotten the tanker boots he didn’t know; they were only supposed to be worn by those who had earned them. As fast as the thought came up, he squashed it. Nothing from that old Earth mattered anymore.

  You always said I mattered, Bo. What happened to us?

  He blinked and kept staring at Aliza Turan. Her matching green fatigue shirt was open but tied at the bottom in front, revealing a black shirt underneath. Bo clenched his jaw and nudged Scout toward her. The whinnie trotted her direction, almost happily. Turan waved to a couple of the others and stopped to talk with Sergeant First Class Whittaker. She smiled and touched his arm and the grizzled old sergeant grinned.

  “Captain Moorefield,” she smiled up as Bo rode up. “Good morning.”

  He nodded and touched the wide brim of his boonie hat. He would have preferred a more traditional cavalry Stetson, but it would have to do. “Miss Turan.”

  “Major Murphy asked me to join you today.”

  Bo pressed his tongue against the inside of his teeth for a long moment. “I’m well aware of what Major Murphy asked, ma’am.”

  Her smiled faded at his tone, and her dark eyes became serious. “I will assist you as needed.”

  “Sergeant First Class Whittaker is my NCOIC. All I need you to do is assist the newbies.” He jerked his head toward a group of unsure soldiers watching others saddle and prepare to mount up.

  “NCOIC,” she squinted. “You mean your second in command?”

  Bo frowned at her. “Yes. That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied with a quizzical raise of her eyebrows. “This new terminology is confusing.”

  “Don’t apologize. It’s a sign of weakness,” Bo said with a grunt.

  “I’ll try to remember that.” She smiled at him and turned toward the whinnies. “You have any recommendations for my mount today?”

  Bo studied the collection of whinnies in the paddock. “What can you handle?”

  “They’re much like horses, yes?” Turan said. “I rode dressage growing up and can handle almost anything.”

  “They’re wilder than horses when you first get started. Not like broncos, but close,” Bo said. He pointed toward a whitish-grey whinnie with a thin blaze of red along its triangular forehead. “That one. She’s a solid mount. We call her Athena.”

  Turn nodded and followed his gaze. “She looks good. I trust your judgment.”

  “We’re leaving in ten minutes. Let’s get the newbies mounted up, Miss Turan.” Bo jerked Scout toward the compound’s front gate. “Sergeant Whittaker? Ten mikes. I’ll meet you at the front gate. I need a SITREP from the CP.”

  Whittaker nodded. “I’ll see that Miss Turan gets everybody in the saddle, sir. She seems to have a good handle on things.”

  Bo frowned. “I want to get moving. Put the newbies in the center of the formation and keep her there.”

  “Respectfully, sir? That woman will go wherever the hell she wants. You’ll be hard pressed to stop her.”

  Bo sighed. “Just get them saddled up, Top.”

  “You want her armed?”

  He thought about it for a long moment. The effort involved with taking an untrained civilian on a patrol was one problem. Providing that civilian with a loaded weapon bumped it up to another level entirely. But Murphy mandated that soldiers remaining planet-side on R’Bak had some weapons training and that they had all “qualified” at a modified weapons range built into the west side of the compound. “Did she qual?”

  Whittaker grinned. “Expert on the M1911, sir. Shot thirty-nine out of forty, if memory serves me right.”

  “Good for her,” Bo grunted. “Make sure she has a sidearm, then. Standard load. Pull extra water for everyone, too.”

  “You thinking it’ll be a long day, sir?”

  “Yeah.” Bo glanced toward the high ground. “Pull a ration, too. Just to be safe.”

  “Done, sir,”
Whittaker said. He jerked his head in Turan’s direction. “She’ll be fine, sir.”

  “I’m not worried about her,” Bo lied. “Have the patrol ready to move out, Top.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  As Bo turned toward the command tent and readied himself to nudge Scout into a trot, he noticed Whittaker smiling. He clenched his teeth. This clusterfuck was Murphy’s idea and as much as Bo wanted to get back on the PFM and give the major a piece of his mind, he knew it wouldn’t do any good. They needed more riders, and while a training program was something he and his squad could do, they couldn’t do it fast enough. Not without help. He glanced back at Turan, surrounded by smiling soldiers as she taught them how to mount the whinnies from the side, like a horse. Not a man in the group was paying attention to the training as she climbed up and swung a leg over the whinnie’s back in one smooth motion. Her fatigue pants were baggy, but not enough to hide her athletic figure.

  Sharron loved horses.

  She rode dressage, too.

  Bo mentally slapped himself even before her words came into his mind.

  You always argued with me about my horses. You were never willing to hear that the Army cost us more in time and money than my horses ever did. You knew how important they were to me and that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the Army.

  He nudged Scout and said to himself, “I will be glad when I don’t hear your voice anymore, Sharron.”

  A whoop sounded from behind him. He whirled in the saddle, just in time see Turan cheering and leading the others in applause as the first of the recruits, Private First Class Boyd, vaulted into the saddle.

  “Whoa, Scout.” He spun the big whinnie in place and trotted over. “Miss Turan. This is not a cheerleading competition. Getting the recruits into the saddle and prepared to ride doesn’t merit a celebration.”

  “They need confidence.” She met his gaze. “And a good leader’s encouragement.”

  Bo clenched his jaw as he felt blood rushing to his face. “Then encourage them to get their asses onto their mounts so we can move out.”

  Turan smiled up at him. “And what would you have me do then, Captain Moorefield?”

  “Once they’re mounted, I expect you to stay in line and keep your interval, Miss Turan,” he replied and forced a tiny smile onto his face. “Keep the FNGs in the middle of the formation and do what I ask. Is that clear?”

  “And what is an FNG? I do not understand your American love of acronyms.”

  Bo frowned and let out a quick sigh of frustration. “Fucking New Guys. The inexperienced riders. The ones you’ve been assigned to babysit in the hopes they can someday ride patrols without adult supervision. Can you understand that, Miss Turan?”

  The mirth drained away from her face. “Perfectly.”

  “Sergeant Whittaker!” Bo called and looked up at the old sergeant now astride his whinnie. “Get the patrol mounted and ready to LD.”

  “LD?” Turan asked. There was a hint of a smile on her lips, and it nearly enraged him.

  “Line of departure. As in crossing it and starting the mission sometime today,” Bo growled. He turned his mount away and made for the command post.

  “Yes, sir,” Whittaker grunted and called for the veterans to help the newbies. Bo didn’t watch. He trusted his NCOIC implicitly, but he also wanted to get an update from Major Murphy. He checked his watch again for the next communications window and frowned. The force conducting the operation should have returned to Camp Stark by dawn, and they were nowhere in sight. Bo felt a familiar knot develop in his stomach. Fourteen months with the UN, the last six of which he’d commanded convoy operations in Mogadishu, had taught him one simple lesson. Retrieving a stranded convoy was difficult enough in friendly zones. Where the enemy had a foothold? Damned near impossible.

  When Bo stepped into the command post, Lieutenant David Meehan was standing before the mapboard, arms crossed and frowning. The young, dark-haired lieutenant adjusted his “birth control glasses” with their thick, myopia-correcting lenses and shook his head.

  “What’s the problem, Dave?” Bo asked.

  Meehan turned to face him. Despite being taken by the Ktor from the jungles of Vietnam in the heat of mid-summer, every inch of him was a pasty, dough-like color. Severe acne dotted his face. Meehan had been twenty-two days into a disastrous tour when he’d fallen behind after an ambush deep in enemy territory. “Sir? Glass Palace reports the convoy is having major issues moving some of those vehicles. They are way behind schedule.”

  Bo nodded. “That hasn’t changed from my conversation with him on their last orbit.”

  “Oh,” Meehan’s mouth worked silently for a few seconds. “It’s just that Major Murphy ordered us to hold our other forces back behind the pass in case the enemy attacks.”

  “Again, that hasn’t changed.” Bo tried not to frown. Meehan was like every other second lieutenant he’d ever met, including the one he’d faced in the mirror years before. “What are you over-thinking?”

  Meehan blushed. “Well, sir, logistically, we can’t support them out there. But you’ve been ordered to go out there on a patrol to support them. Even though you’re the OIC of this camp. You should be here monitoring the radio and making decisions.”

  Bo almost smiled. “Just because I’m out there doesn’t mean that I will not be making decisions.”

  “But I can focus on, and handle, activities here in the rear.” Meehan brightened. “Give you one less thing to think about.”

  Oh, hell no. “Negative, Dave. You are manning the CP until I return. No other duties or distractions. Not even making sure that the men are memorizing the enemy equipment manuals that the indigs passed on to us. Your job is to corral information that we’ll need out there. You and Sergeant Yarbrough will oversee base activities, yes, but you will let him handle the priorities of work. You remember that term?”

  “Vaguely.” Meehan frowned. “Officers work on plans and command while the sergeants handle the business of the post?”

  “Close enough.” Bo grinned. They were far from any government they’d ever known, and while invigorating, it was scary, too. They were alone—to a point. “Whatever Major Murphy wants to happen will come, and it’s not just us who will respond to it. We have one mission right now: to go support that patrol. I’m taking it for two reasons. One, I’m the most experienced rider in camp and using the whinnie cavalry is my idea. Nobody else can handle that. Two, the commander in the rear is almost always wrong. I’ll be out front where I can see the terrain and shape the operation. That’s new to you, I get it. Just because you’re in the rear doesn’t mean that you can take it easy. I need you monitoring the situation and keeping me informed of what the other camps and forces may do as this thing unravels.”

  “Unravels?” Meehan squinted behind his glasses. “You think this mission will fall apart, sir?”

  “I do, Dave. That’s what we have to be ready for. You’re here to lead that effort. Not everyone gets to wield the sword of destiny, son,” Bo drawled theatrically.

  Meehan shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir.”

  “Old movies, Lieutenant.” Bo grinned and pushed through the tent flaps and into the morning light. “It’s a fine cavalry day.”

  * * *

  Camp Stark sat slightly back from the edge of a tableland that overlooked a five-hundred-kilometer-long valley which flowed up and into what the locals called the Hamain: the highest and most arid region on this part of R’Bak. Although well-hidden in a small basin nestled between the slopes that wrinkled the top of the shelf-like plateau, the outpost’s position and altitude was optimal for providing early warning for the bulk of the aviation and heavier assets that would soon be gathering in a sheltered canyon well behind it to the east.

  Five kilometers to the southwest of the camp, pushing up from the rim of the two hundred and fifty-meter-high walls of the tableland, was a small hill covered in the alien scrub. The exoflora looked eerily like sage
on the western American plains but smelled entirely different. Bo had positioned one observation post atop that hill, from which observers could look down into the pass that led up to the tableland. They could also watch the termination point of a steep, dry gulch that carried occasional highland run-off south and then west to the ocean. The intermittent lakes and streams in the wide valley, like most of the water sources on the continent, were slowly receding. Where there was water near the surface, the alien vegetation seemed to be in almost constant bloom, as if trying desperately to stay alive before it died under the intense heat of the Sear.

  Surveying the stark landscape from the front of the patrol as it edged downward, Bo steered Scout through a series of craters that indicated the use of heavy artillery sometime in the past. In the dust lay rusted shards of shrapnel from a massive shell, far larger than anything he’d seen used on Earth. As time and distance passed with no update from the convoy, Bo moved the patrol south of the main pass and chose to leave the rim by a narrow cut he’d seen the whinnies use.

  At the top of the trail, Bo reined up Scout and moved to the side. Specialist Sublete took point and confidently coaxed his whinnie downward. Several of the newer riders went by. None of them spoke to Bo and only one dared to look up as their whinnies loped down the brush-covered trail. In the middle of the formation, Aliza Turan was coaching one of the new riders. Her eyes never left him and though she forced a smile as she spoke, Bo could sense her anger from twenty meters away.