How Dark the World Becomes

by Frank Chadwick

  Wataski reported the count to Fong-Ramirez, since he was the senior officer present—not that this sort of thing was covered by his training.

  Wataski finished her report to Fong-Ramirez and then turned away and threw up in a corner. When she was done, she wiped her mouth and glared around the room, daring anyone to say something.

  “Those bologna sandwiches on the train really sucked,” I said.

  “You think you’re funny?” she demanded, eyes hard as steel.

  “Yeah, a laugh a minute. You want an ammo count?”

  She glared at me for a second or two, and then nodded.

  “Yes. You dry?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nope. I got four mags left in the harness and seventeen rounds in the system. Two grenades still in the pipe, too, but I haven’t checked your Marine’s pack to see if she has any more.”

  “Four mags? You shy about shooting people?” she asked.

  Behind me, I heard Marfoglia laugh humorlessly. I nodded over my shoulder.

  “My fan club doesn’t seem to think so. I just don’t know when we’re likely to see any more ammo, that’s all, so I kept it on selective fire and used a light touch.”

  She scowled at me for a couple seconds, as if to intimidate me. The thing was, I wasn’t drawing Marine pay, so she could give me all the Real Bad Glares she wanted to. My concern was three people, and if anybody here was going to live, they were. Period. So glare away, Wataski.

  * * *

  “Well, this is the situation,” Fong-Ramirez said, a half hour later, to the semicircle of “shooters.” He spoke in English, but one of the MPs muttered the translation into some Varoki language I didn’t recognize for the two MPs that didn’t understand English. The six Varoki each stood about a head taller than most of us Humans, so we made a ragged-looking huddle. The shadows were already long as Prime crowded K’Tok’s horizon. Maybe I should have known the star’s name, but nobody uses the star catalogues but astronomers and astrogators. What matters are the inhabitable worlds; the primary stars in most systems are just “Prime” to average guys like me, or “the Star,” the way folks back on Earth just talk about “the Sun,” not Sol.

  Aside from Fong-Ramirez himself, there were nine shooters: four Varoki MPs with sidearms, two Marines still standing—Wataski and Aguillar—the ranking uHoko officer, Lieutenant Palaan, who had picked up the other Marine assault rifle, a Varoki private security guy with his own gauss pistol, and me. Four RAG-19 combat weapon systems and five gauss pistols or light carbines—six with Fong-Ramirez’s own sidearm: not much of an arsenal.

  “We have a functional TBC—tight beam communicator,” the exec went on, “but the satellite comm system is off-line, so we can’t contact the Fitz—that’s KUs-222—until we have line of sight, two hours from now. Even then, I’m not sure what the captain can do, but at least she can figure something out if she knows our situation.”

  “She can put the Mikes down, sir,” Wataski said.

  Fong-Ramirez nodded.

  “That’s correct, Sergeant, provided she hasn’t already had to commit the Mike Force elsewhere, or there isn’t a potential situation which requires her to keep it as a force in being. Remember, if we don’t have access to the Needle, and the bad guys have any sort of air-defense capability, once she drops the Mike Force, it’s down. The landing barge won’t be an option for recovering them.”

  Fong-Ramirez went up a bit in my estimation right then. I mean, he’d seemed like a decent enough guy back on the Fitz, all that Captain Didactic stuff aside. But now he was showing some brains and perspective. It’s easy to just see your own problems; he was stepping back and looking at the big picture. We had no sure indication that the Needle was compromised, but security was deteriorating in T’tokl-Heem, the attack on the maglev suggested that things were getting worse instead of better, and it was a pretty good guess that we at least shouldn’t count on the Needle for a while. How did that shape Gasiri’s options?

  Not in our favor, that’s for sure. Well, if she couldn’t drop the Mike Force, maybe she could drop a couple containers of ammo. Not everyone had been as careful as me, and I’d already had to give up one magazine just to give Lieutenant Palaan a reload. I still had more rounds left than anyone else, so unless these guys got really light on the fingers, we had one more fight in us, and then we were dry and it was all over.

  “Commander, I got a couple questions,” I piped up, and he nodded for me to go on.

  “First off, just what the hell is going on? I mean, maybe everyone in uniform got a briefing or something, but there are a few civilians here and we’re all pretty much in the dark. Who’s shooting at us, for starters?”

  “Good question, Mr. Naradnyo. Unfortunately I don’t have a firm answer for you. A few days ago and I’d have said they were certainly insurgents. Now that the uBakai and uZmataanki are at war, and shots have been exchanged between uZmataanki and Cottohazz naval forces, we aren’t really sure what the situation is.”

  “You mean those might be local colonial troops shooting at us?” I asked. Fong-Ramirez looked uncomfortable with the question.

  “I don’t think we can rule that possibility out,” he answered reluctantly.

  Great.

  “Okay, next question. When we get word to orbit, why don’t they have the troops back at T’tokl-whatever send some transport aircraft to pick us up?”

  “Another good question. But the reason we were moving by rail is this is all non-secured air space. No atmospheric aircraft, and certainly no orbital shuttles, are safe coming down here. If there’s going to be a relief column, it will have to come overland.”

  If? I didn’t much like hearing that.

  “Okay. Last question. Wataski, can you patch our embedded comms into your squad tacnet?”

  She shook her head.

  “I need a platoon terminal to do it. No got. We’ll have to go with audibles.”

  Audibles—a polite word for “shout over the noise of battle.” Well, it had worked for cave men, so I guessed it might work for us. Of course, a tacnet could have translated English to aGavoosh, or aHoka—or aPig Latin, whatever those MPs spoke. Absent that—and figuring that a running translation under fire wasn’t all that practical—tactical hand signals were probably going to be the order of the day.

  I was a little rusty. Now, what was the tactical hand signal for “FUBAR”?

  * * *

  I crawled back and sat down next to my three charges and, because nothing gets by me, noticed right away that the group had grown to four. There were also four other Varoki youngsters clustered at a cautious distance, sizing up Barraki and Tweezaa—probably waiting until the grown-ups got their stuff over with so they could make contact between the two tribes.

  Marfoglia was kneeling, sitting back on her feet, back straight, with both hands on her knees. She lifted one hand, turned the palm up, and gestured gracefully to the middle-aged Varoki sitting between Barraki and Tweezaa—the Gavaan-Varoki formal presentation of an important guest in one’s home.

  “This is the Honorable Bok e-Kavaa,” she said.

  The guy was late middle-aged, I’d guess, with a thick torso—the Varoki equivalent of a pot belly—and the reflective sheen of the skin on his head and hands was beginning to dull with age. He wore a torn and muddy civil uniform—closer to a suit, really, and with no insignia, but a common cut and color, in this case dark green.

  “Hey, TheHon,” I said. “How you doing?”

  Marfoglia frowned at me, but the Varoki paper pusher smiled faintly.

  “I am reminding myself how much better I am than so many of my colleagues. I am afraid that a good many of them out along the road are dead.”

  I nodded. Good chance of it, although maybe the guys hitting us—whoever the hell they were—took some of them as hostages. Hostages for what, though?

  The Varoki private security guy who formed part of our small combat force walked past. He and TheHon exchanged a look, TheHon nodded and
smiled to him, and the guard walked on and settled down next to another Varoki, also in civil green. That guy was a bit older than the security guy, near as I could tell, with alert eyes and an unmistakable air of authority. Apparently he rated his own bodyguard.

  “Mr. e-Kavaa is the assistant to the Cottohazz Executive Council’s special envoy plenipotentiary for emergency abatement on K’Tok,” Marfoglia elaborated.

  “That’s nice. That your boss over there?” I asked, nodding over at him, and TheHon looked at me oddly, but nodded.

  “You . . . have met him before?”

  “Just putting two and two together. I’d say you and your boss are in the right place, pal. Any time you guys feel like abating this emergency, be my guest.”

  He smiled ruefully, humor sparkling in his eyes.

  I checked out my three people of interest. I already knew they’d come through the fight without a scratch, and by now they’d settled down as well as could be expected.

  Marfoglia still had my Hawker 10—“the big one”—stuck in the waist band of the white Navy slacks which—along with a white short-sleeved shirt with insignia removed—the Fitz’s astrogator had given her. Well, an hour ago they’d been white; crawling through muddy drainage ditches had left all of us pretty earth-toned, but she’d wiped off her face, pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and tucked her shirt in, so she actually looked tidy—at least by the standards of current company.

  I was getting to know her well enough to figure she was shaking like a leaf behind that façade of manners and duty, so I didn’t begrudge her the frowns of reproach. She hid her fears behind the niceties of form; I hid mine behind wise-ass remarks. Whatever gets you by.

  Barraki must have been scared, but he was doing a great job of pretending nonchalance. Marfoglia had dug a couple kotee-nut bars out of her pockets, and Barraki was eating one of them, looking around with curiosity but no apparent concern. When I looked close, though, I could see his eyes were darting back and forth from place to place, never staying put for more than a second or two, his ears twitching and turning restlessly. He was keeping it together, though, and that’s what counted. Maybe he’d taken some panic-control lessons from Marfoglia. He could have done worse.

  Whatever gets you by.

  Tweezaa had the other kotee-nut bar, but she was just holding it. She was eyes-wide scared, and although she wasn’t making a big deal about it, it was pretty clear she didn’t really care if anyone knew it, either. Strange little girl. So far as I could tell, she never said or did anything—or failed to say or do something—just to make an impression. It wasn’t that she didn’t care what other people thought or felt; she just didn’t seem to care what they thought or felt about her. In my life, I have met a handful of people whose self-image had nothing to do with the reflection they cast in the eyes of others. All of those people were very old, except for Tweezaa.

  Strange little girl.

  It was up to me to say something to put them a little more at ease, but I wasn’t comfortable saying everything was going to be swell when I couldn’t be sure it would be. They’d have to take what comfort they could from the plain old truth.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. We don’t know who’s shooting at us or why, but we’re secure for now in this house. So far all we’ve seen are AWiGs—assholes with guns—and we can handle them. If they bring up an armored vehicle or a tac missile or something, it might get interesting, but I doubt they’ve got anything that heavy—or that we’re important enough to them to commit it—but if they do, we’ll have to improvise. But for now, we’re snug. In about two hours we’ll be able to contact Captain Gasiri in orbit, and we’ll see what she can work out.”

  “Are they insurgents?” TheHon asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Ya nya znayu. Ya toureest.”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “I don’t know; I am a tourist,” I translated. It was a wonderfully useful phrase, the perfect answer to almost any question. Other than yes, no, and obscene insults, it was about all I knew of the Old Language.

  “Have the soldiers been able to contact any Cottohazz ground elements?” TheHon asked.

  I shook my head. What was his real name? I’d already forgotten, so TheHon would have to do.

  “Nobody has a broadcast transmitter along, just tight beam. Thing is, all the relay towers are down and the communication satellites are off-line, so we’re stuck with line of sight.”

  “But what can they do to help from orbit?” Marfoglia asked.

  I didn’t want to oversell this, so I thought about it for a second or two before answering.

  “Well, the big thing is they can copy the ground forces—those three MP cohorts—on our location and situation, and then hopefully those guys can arrange an overland rescue. They can also drop us supplies, which we’ll need if we’re going to be out here for a while.”

  “You did not mention the Mike Force,” TheHon said. So he knew at least something about what was what, which was understandable given his job description. I mean, when it comes to “emergency abatement,” not much tops a shit-load of Marines dropped from orbit.

  “I wouldn’t count on Captain Gasiri dropping her last reserves for a rescue mission,” I answered.

  “What is a Mike Force?” Barraki asked.

  “Mike stands for Meteoric Insertion Capable,” I answered. “The Mikes come down from orbit red-hot in individual reentry capsules.”

  His eyes lit up with recognition.

  “Oh, yes, the Azza-kaat! I have seen vids of them. Have you ever dropped from orbit, Sasha?”

  I laughed.

  “Not a chance, pal. Not on a bet.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  What is the essential prerequisite of leadership?

  Is it brains? I don’t think so. I’ve known some real dumb-asses that folks would follow anywhere, and I’ve known brainy guys that could hardly get their shadows to tag along. Don’t get me wrong; anyone I follow I’d rather be smart than stupid, but it’s not smart that makes them a leader, is it?

  Being honest with your people, giving them a fair shake, sharing their load, looking out for them—those are all great qualities to have in leaders, but they don’t make leaders.

  Courage.

  The essential prerequisite of leadership is courage.

  Any situation which requires leadership—as opposed to management, which is an entirely different animal—is by its nature fraught with fear. That’s why people need leadership—to get them through a fearful situation. And nothing messes with your ability to make clear, rational decisions like fear. So anyone who in a fearful situation can stare down that fear, and keep their mind clear enough to make good decisions, is a leader. Those folks aren’t leaders because I say so; they’re leaders because that’s who people follow.

  Of course, what goes along with that is that people who have the sort of delicate egos and fragile self-images which make them yearn to be hailed as great leaders naturally spend a lot of their lives drumming up business by trying to make people afraid.

  Once the Fitz came over the communication horizon that evening, Gasiri had about ten minutes to make a decision, unless she wanted to wait until the next transit to do something, and a lot could happen in those extra hours. Ten minutes—and that was stretching it. Wait any longer and the Mikes would overshoot us.

  Even though the Mikes are supposed to be ready to rumble on a moment’s notice, even though all the ammo and gear was preloaded, even though you could get them in the capsules, pop them out, then do a quick briefing with downloaded intel and maps while they were in the early part of their descent, ten minutes still doesn’t leave you any Murphy-margin. There was no way for Gasiri to know whether she could even recover her Mikes once they were down, given how fluid the situation was getting, and there was no time to gather more information, think things through, or even get anyone else’s ideas.

  Eighteen minutes after the Fitz broke the comm horizon, we could see the first bright streak
s as the Mike capsules hit atmosphere.

  That’s courage.

  * * *

  Not that we had time to leisurely enjoy the overhead light show. Once we got the word that the Mikes were coming down, we were, as the saying goes, “all asses and elbows.” Up until then, we’d been hunkered down in the house. Now we needed to move our shooters out and either secure a drop zone for the Mikes or, failing that, at least figure out how hot the reception was going to be.

  We left the two linguistically challenged MPs behind as rear security and moved out in two squads of four shooters each, each squad with one of the two Marines as a comm link and one of the two officers for adult supervision. For firepower each team had two of the RAG-19s and two gauss pistols. My team was Fong-Ramirez, Wataski, the envoy’s bodyguard, and me. SOP was for the command and control element—Fong-Ramirez and Wataski—to bring up the rear, with us two expendable guys up front to trigger ambushes and booby traps and stuff like that. It made sense; I was just ten years out of practice at being expendable.

  How expendable was I? Well, Wataski relieved me of two more magazines and all of my grenades, if that tells you anything.

  In return, she gave me a snooperball. You roll it into a room, and its cameras, mikes, and seismics capture everything in all those different directions as it rolls, while its internal locomotor keeps it rolling in programmed patterns, like a purposeful Mexican jumping bean. The smart feed sorts all that wildly moving, spinning imagery into a stable 3D video display in the helmet visor of the scout. I still had Private Coleman’s helmet, but had the feed patched into Wataski’s display as well. All those images ghosted onto the visor can be disorienting unless you’re used to it, and I was definitely rusty. I fell on my face twice trying to walk while the snooperball display was running, and cracked my shin hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.

  You get away from something for a while, you start feeling nostalgic about it. It’s good to be reminded that, fond memories and colorful tattoos notwithstanding, the Army really did suck. Not the guys I served with; I loved them, still do—even the assholes, maybe especially the assholes, because they needed it more, and if you’ve been there, you understand that. So I love those guys. But the Army—the thing itself—that’s a different story.