by J. N. Chaney
“‘Kinda?’ I’d say so. There can’t be more than a dozen or so. As soon as we can, I want to see the recording.”
Everything that Rev saw, as with every other Marine, was being recorded. Most of it was protected by privacy laws, but combat was not. As his immediate commander, Rev was pretty sure that he had the right to the recording. Not that he minded. His mind was a little fuzzy, probably due to the drugs, but he was beginning to feel damned proud of what he’d accomplished.
“And from the looks of it, just in time,” the lieutenant said, pointing down to the plain. In the airspace above it, tiny dots that had to be shuttles were descending. The Drop Marines had secured the beachhead, and the next phase had commenced. If Rev’s Centaur had been able to fire on them, how many would have been lost?
“I’m going to put you in for the Platinum Nova when this is over.”
That caught Rev’s attention. A PN?
Not many Platinum Novas were awarded to living enlisted Marines. There had been an old Marine in the Lionsgate neighborhood when Rev was a kid, living in a house some builder had given to him back when he received the award. The guy couldn’t buy a drink in any bar—and the rumor was that he hit all of the bars as often as he could.
Hell, with a PN, he could write his own ticket after he got out.
“I was just doing what I had to,” Rev said, which he knew was the expected response.
“Doesn’t matter.” The lieutenant, hands on his hips, looked around the devastated area. “You were the one who did it.”
There was a wistful edge to his voice, and Rev knew for a fact that the lieutenant would have done just as he had. He wished it had been him in the position.
“Anyway, damned fine job. But we’re not done.”
He turned to the gunny and shouted out, “You about finished up there?”
The gunny frowned and said, “I don't know what the hell I’m doing.” He held up his collection kit. “If we’ve got anything worthwhile, I sure as hell can’t tell, Lieutenant.”
Every Marine carried a small collection kit of swabs and ampules. Any time a Centaur was killed, it exploded, and the Marines were supposed to swab the area, trying to obtain traces of it for the science-types to examine. Rev was with the gunny on this, though. Looking around at the ashes and splinters of some of the bigger trees, he wouldn’t know where to swab.
“You’re done, then. Come on back. We’re still on the clock here, and I’d feel a lot better once we’re tucked safe and sound inside our spider holes.”
“What do you want me to do, sir?” Rev asked. “My spider hole is still good.”
The lieutenant looked around again, his eyebrows furrowed then down at Rev’s mangled sabaton. “No, you’re not really combat-ready.” The gunny and Tomiko walked up, and the lieutenant said,“I want you and Private Reiser to double up. As soon as we get some resolution as to the battle, I’ll try to get you out of here, even if that’s only to get a new combat suit. Gunny, you and I need to get back to our positions.”
The two made their way up the rise. At the top, the lieutenant turned and looked over the devastation again and said, “Fucking-A Awesome,” before moving out of sight.
“Well, you sure impressed him,” Tomiko said. “But, if we’re sharing a hole, I’m going to need a lot more room for your fat ass, and I take it you’re going to milk that foot enough so that I’ve got to do the digging.”
“Got it in one, Miko. You heard the corporal.”
“Eat me,” she said, but she couldn’t keep the smile from taking over her face.
Rev settled into the bottom of the fighting hole. With two of them, it wasn’t a spider hole anymore. A full meter and a half across, they couldn’t use a plug to cover them, so Tomiko had dragged over some branches to give them at least a semblance of cover.
Now with the excitement past, he was able to rationally consider what had just happened, and one thing was beginning to bother him.
“Why the hell didn’t you remind me that the damned Centaur was going to blow,” he asked.
“A what?”
Rev vaguely remembered something about that from his AI brief back at the resort, but he couldn’t recall many of the details.
“OK, so it was a Class 3 or whatever. Why didn’t you tell me?”
< You have assigned me a PQ of fifteen. That does not allow me to volunteer Class Three or lower statements.>
“What? So, you were going to allow me to get killed?”
His AI remained silent.
Rev felt his anger beginning to rage again. What the hell good was his AI if it was going to withhold information that could end up getting him killed? The emotions of knowing he was going to die, then living, then the fight, and now the drugs, were warring within him, and he was at the end of his emotional rope. He wanted to lash out at his AI, to scream at it, but despite everything, he knew that was stupid. It was only a program, existing in a zillion on and off switches.
He took several deep breaths as he considered how to phrase this in order to get the right answers.
“What would it take for you to be able to give me Class 3, uh . . . interjections.”
“That’s it?”
Rev considered that. More personality would mean more interaction, more conversations, and he wasn’t sure he wanted that. He didn’t want to be like Tomiko or some of the others with their 100 PQ AIs, treating them like other real people.
But maybe 25 percent wouldn’t be too bad. And if it would keep him from another stupid mistake, one with fatal consequences, it could be worth it.
He looked at Tomiko beside him as she watched through her Optisight. She’d saved his dumb ass, but he couldn’t count on her being there all the time for him.
“Okay, go to twenty-five percent.”
Geez! We were just talking about your PQ, for the Mother’s sake.
“Go to twenty-five percent PQ.”
“And, if I’m on top of a Centaur, and it’s about to blow, you’ll remind me?”
Rev waited for something else—a wiseass comment, or something—but his AI was evidently done. He twisted his foot around. The Nuskin the corporal had applied looked shiny and healthy in the middle, if a little dirty from the walk over, but the edges were peeling a bit. He hoped that was normal.
He was bored. They’d been on the planet for nineteen hours, and it had been eleven hours since their first mission. They’d reached this position six hours ago, and it had been just an hour and twenty minutes since his fight with the Centaur, so it wasn’t as if nothing had happened. But crouched at the bottom of a fighting hole, doing nothing, was getting to him.
“You want me to watch for a while?” he asked Tomiko.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Maybe I can take our six. That Centaur snuck up on me like a ghost.”
Tomiko turned to look at him, then shrugged. “OK, why not?”
Grateful for that, Rev started to stand when a flash lit the sky for a moment. “What was that?” he asked.
Tomiko’s body tensed, and she leaned forward into her Optisight as if that would help her see better.
Rev pushed his head through the branches covering their hole a moment before the pressure wave rolled over them, swaying the trees and kicking up a bit of dust. That barely registered, because his attention was locked down at the city where a huge column of smoke and dust rose into the air.
“What do you think did that?” Tomiko asked nervously, poking her head out as well.
“I don’t know. Maybe we trapped a bunch of them and they self-destructed?”
Rev didn’t beli
eve that, but he could hope.
Both watched in silence after that until Tomiko said, “Over there, to the west.”
Rev shifted his gaze. A flight was coming low over the ground. They could be Marine Lightning attack atmospheric craft, but there were too many of them, and Rev didn’t think they flew in formations like that. There was a flash as one disappeared, but they were just too far away for the two to make them out.
Rev didn’t need to see them clearly though. They had to be Centaurs, and a lot of them. And that meant the regiment was in the shit big time.
“What do we do now?” he asked quietly.
“Not much we can do,” Tomiko said in a resigned voice. She’d come to the same conclusion that he had. “We just wait for further orders.”
Rev’s heart was hollow, and he felt nauseous. Marines were dying down there, Marines he knew, while they were perched on a ridge far out of the danger zone, mere spectators.
It was frustrating being out of the loop, not knowing what was happening, and that made his imagination run wild. He kept looking at his comms circuits, but they remained quiet. Maybe that was a good thing, he tried to tell himself.
Twenty-three minutes, fourteen seconds after the blast in the city, his comms finally lit up.
“Third Team, we need to get to the rally point now,” the lieutenant passed. “We’ve got seventeen minutes. No time for a tactical move. Just get there if you don’t want to be left behind.”
Tomiko swore under her breath as she bounded out of the hole.
“Pelletier, are you going to make it?” the lieutenant asked on the P2P, the person-to-person circuit. “Do I need to come help you?”
“You coming?” Tomiko shouted at him.
Rev shot out of the hole. A broken sabaton or not, an injured foot or not, he was still a Marine.
“I’m fine, sir. Don’t need you,” he said as he darted after Tomiko.
Seventeen minutes was going to be tight, very tight, and running while missing the bottom of his sabaton was harder than he’d expected. His foot was taking a beating, but he didn’t let up, keeping his eyes locked on Tomiko’s back as they ran through the forest, climbing to the RP located in the high ground to the south. Slowly, however, she was pulling away until twenty meters ahead, Tomiko turned to check, then stopped dead when she saw how far back he’d fallen. She waited until he caught up, then stood to his side, urging him on.
“Go on,” he said. “You can’t miss the extract.”
“No way, Rev. Come on. Just push through it.”
Rev bore down, trying to isolate the pain. He wanted to ask his AI for some sort of help, but he couldn’t afford the loss of concentration. Running like this was difficult, even without the pain. His right leg was normal, but he was essentially barefoot with his left, and that was screwing up his rhythm.
Rev startled and brought up his M-49 when something crashed from his right, but it was the gunny who ran up alongside him.
“You managing?” he asked.
“Like a pro,”Rev said, putting on a brave front. “You go on.”
“We’re a team, and I’m not about to leave you behind. Too much damned paperwork, Pelletier, and you know how I hate that. Don’t be an asshole. Let me help.”
The gunny reached for his left arm, but Rev shook him off. If the gunny and Tomiko didn’t speed up, they would be left behind. He was already accepting the fact that he would be, but they didn’t need to perform a needless sacrifice.
“No one is an individual, Pelletier,” the gunny snarled. “Take my help.”
Rev started to recoil when an image splashed down in his mind: going up Mount Motherfucker, Bundy offering to help, and Drill Instructor Gracer lecturing him. He could see her now, chewing his ass, asking him if she hadn’t taught him anything.
His resistance broke. He let the gunny sling his right arm around his shoulders, and at her urging, he put his right hand on Tomiko’s shoulder. It took fifty or sixty meters to get the rhythm. Rev hopping with just his right leg, his left held up. It still wasn’t easy, but he was able to keep going.
Not fast enough, however. At seventeen minutes, they were still five hundred meters away.
“Sorry, guys,” he wheezed out between hops.
“Sorry my ass,” the gunny grunted. Augmented or not, this was taking a lot out of him as well.
Rev kept looking ahead, expecting to see their ride rise on the slope ahead. He knew they were stranded, and that sickened him that Tomiko and the gunny were as well, all because of him, but there was part of him that was glad he wasn’t going to have to go through this alone.
At four hundred meters, the lieutenant, Tanu, and Staff Sergeant Montez rushed out of the trees.
“What are you doing?” Rev asked in a daze as the lieutenant relieved the gunny and Tanu took Rev’s right arm.
“Just picking up our lost sheep,” the lieutenant said. “Now let’s go.”
With the lieutenant almost carrying him, they shot up the hill. After two hundred meters, Tanu shouldered most of Rev’s weight.
They burst into the RP, a small, level clearing, and there was one of the most beautiful sights Rev had ever seen. A small, nondescript craft that Rev didn’t recognize took up most of the space, a muted Perseus Union Navy insignia on the side. A pilot was anxiously looking back, mouthing at them to hurry.
Rev was surprised the pilot had held. He would have expected him to bolt when the seventeen minutes were up, but as they rushed into the tiny cargo compartment, he understood. Fatima’s body was on the deck, but Corporal Dean-Ballester was standing right behind the pilot, her M-49 not quite pointing at his head but close enough for him to get the message.
She looked at him in the jumble of bodies in the tiny compartment and pointed her M-49 at his foot.
“I thought I told you to stay off your feet,” she said as the little craft jumped into the air to escape the planet’s grasp.
24
“I think it was just an overabundance of caution,” Tanu said. “We hurt them bad, but unless the damned Navy can hold the skies, we can’t do much more.”
“I’m not so sure. After only three hours and change? We wouldn’t have even gotten the entire regiment onto the planet,” Staff Sergeant Montez said.
“It wasn’t us. I heard that the Bucks got their asses handed to them. Never reached the surface,” Sergeant Nix said.
“Now where would you hear that?” the lieutenant asked in a snarl. “We’ve been stuck in here together since we embarked.”
“Just saying, sir. I mean, maybe I overheard it from one of the swabbies. I don’t know.”
“Let’s just keep the rumor mill to a minimum, OK?”
The lieutenant rolled over in the bunk, face to the bulkhead. Rev didn’t know if he was going to sleep or was just trying to keep out of the conversation. But he’d been right. The little Navy boat had taken them to a larger ship, then taken off again the second the team had cleared the hangar. They didn’t even know the name of the ship, and no one took the time to inform them. They’d stayed in the ready room for twenty minutes before several sailors rushed in to grab Fatima’s body.
From their talk, she was getting transported to another ship, which probably meant two things: one, this ship didn’t have an advanced enough sickbay to zombie her, and two, she wasn’t just some casual civilian. She had to be Omega Division, Gunny had said.
All that meant, however, was that she had a chance. Her brain hadn’t been hit, and she was still within the window . . . barely. But Omega Division or Secretary General of the COH, Mother Nature had her own rules that were unbending.
Four minutes later, five weary-looking Drop Marines were dumped in with them, but before anyone could ask them what had happened, the team was hustled out, jammed into the little berthing space, and told to stay there and out of the way. From the personal effects still in the space, they knew they were taking over some sailors’ racks.
“How’s the foot?” Kel asked, sliding closer t
o him.
Rev had almost forgotten about it.
Almost.
But with her mention, it started aching again.
“S’all right,” he told her.
She motioned for him to lift his foot into her lap. She prodded it, which made him wince, and he wondered why his damned nanos hadn’t deadened all the pain yet.
“Most of the Nuskin’s been torn off. I’ll get some more from the ship’s sickbay, but I don’t think there’s any major damage. A week on light duty, and I think you’ll be fine.”
Tanu was sitting in the rack across from Rev, the space so narrow that they were almost touching knees. He was looking at Rev’s foot, his mouth in a little grimace.
“That bad?” Rev asked sarcastically.
“No, not really. I mean, yeah, it looks like shit, but man, for a boot, you really kicked some Centaur ass.”
“Who you calling a boot, Private First Class Tanuwijaya?” Tomiko said, theatrically emphasizing his name and rank. “You’ve barely been in longer than us. ’Sides, the tin-ass shot off his boot, so you can’t be calling him that anymore,” she added, pointing at Rev’s foot, which was still in Kel’s lap.
It wasn’t that funny, but in the stress of what they’d gone through, not knowing what was going on, it was as if the team was grasping for a reason to laugh. Everyone broke out, even the lieutenant faking sleep.
“It’s official. No more calling Pelletier ‘boot.’ You’re going to have to come up with another name. I have spoken,” the gunny said, which caused even more laughter.
Several names were offered, only a few that could be repeated in polite company, and Rev was careful not to object to any of the worse ones. Old Mr. Oliva, back before he’d reported in, had warned him about that. Object to a nickname, and that was going to be it.
What had happened wasn’t forgotten. It remained hanging over them, a lurking presence, and eventually, the conversations drifted back to it.
“Do you think Hus-Man made it off the planet?” Tomiko said, breaking a superstition.
Gunny reached down from the upper rack and gave her a smack on the top of the head. He was Old School, and he followed every Marine superstition to the letter. It was bad luck to ask about missing comrades.
