Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel

by Charles E. Gannon

  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 OPs 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.

  “That’s it. Now, just lean back a little and try to relax. He’ll be just fine on the descent,” she reassured the soldier as she nodded him onward and brought her mount, Athena, to a stop next to Scout. The whinnies glanced at each other and purred.

  “Miss Turan,” Bo said. He touched the brim of his boonie hat and nodded politely. “Nice day for a ride.”

  “Why aren’t we on the north side of the pass? That area is almost entirely unexplored.” She stared holes through him. “We should look there for the medicinals the indigs taught us to identify and collect.”

  Bo forced a smile onto his lips. “The terrain over there is much steeper than here. It would take us twice the time to descend it and four times as much to climb back up. We don’t have that kind of time today.”

  “But those medicinals are valuable. Some of them are priceless in this culture.”

  “So is water, Miss Turan. That’s what we’re scouting for until the patrol gets back.”

  She scoffed. “You’re not trying to find anything. You’re just hoping the whinnies do it for you.”

  “This is a migration route for them. I’m not sure if you understand how game trails work, but they often connect to water sources.” Bo looked over the pas
sing formation again. Sergeant Whittaker and the rear element were in sight now. “You should get moving.”

  “Fine.” She shook her head. “But I’m guessing there’s no water source down there close enough for our use.”

  “Maybe so.” Bo removed his hat and wiped his brow with his left sleeve. “But I know for a fact there’re no medicinals along this side of the valley for the next ten kilometers. You can stop looking for them and keep coaching the newbies, Miss Turan.”

  “And you’ll be doing what, exactly?”

  Bo leaned forward in the saddle and nudged Scout forward. The whinnie moved as if he wanted nothing more than to get away from the woman. Bo knew how he felt. “We’re meeting an indig guide at the bottom of the trail. He’s taking us south, along the base of the rim. It’s a path we’ve never ridden before that skirts the outside edge of sector four.”

  “You’re taking us out of our sector? And you won’t search for medicinals in a brand-new area?”

  “Yes, I am. And no, I won’t.” Bo turned his back on her. “We’ve patrolled out here for three weeks now. The river valley is our best shot for a water source, even if it’s an aquifer.”

  “Searching the same area repeatedly and expecting a different result sounds very much like insanity, Captain Moorefield.” Her voice rose as she added, “Just because it’s steep doesn’t mean there’s nothing of value out there.”

  Bo pointed with his right hand, “Get back in line and keep your interval.”

  Damn that woman.

  * * *

  Aliza clenched her jaw and pressed her tongue against the back of her front teeth to bite back a reply even as what she’d said dawned on her. For a moment, she heard Ben Mazza’s voice across the dark desert north of Jerusalem.

  Just because it’s steep doesn’t mean there’s nothing out there.

  He’d said the same words in the moments before her memory stopped, and she’d woken in this distant future and impossibly far from home.

  Except she really hadn’t had a home in years, not since the Nazis forced her onto the train to Dachau. After liberation, she knew that her town was not her home anymore. Germany wasn’t either. The few Germans she saw soon after the Americans freed them wouldn’t even look at her in their shame.

  Amongst the other emaciated survivors, she’d found very few women and no one younger than herself. While the Americans nursed them back to life, she’d found Ben gnawing on an American chocolate ration bar as he sat against a low stone wall. They’d looked at each other for a few seconds before he held up the candy and waved her over. She’d sat down next to him, nibbled on the chocolate, and spoke her first words in over three months.

  From there, they’d been fast friends and looked out for each other. As her color returned and her ribs disappeared back inside her skin, there’d been more than one occasion where she’d caught the attention of American soldiers only to have Ben step in front of them. One day, an American officer saw several of his men approach and circle her. He’d stepped to her side with a level of anger which surprised and shocked her. He raged at them for even thinking about her, or any of the other women in the compound, sexually. If they didn’t remember that they were here as rescuers, they were no better than the Nazis. The men had averted their eyes in shame and apologized, but the officer had not let it go, swearing that he would be watching them. Every day.

  That officer had worn the gold oak leaf of a major, as she learned later, but she’d never learned his name. The only other thing she remembered about him was the screaming eagle patch he wore on his shoulder. The same one that Major Murphy wore, along with the same gold oak leaf. She doubted that she could have made herself trust the men who awakened her into this strange future had she not seen those two symbols and felt the faintest pulse of trust, of safety, that they quickened in her heart.

  A day after waking, she’d eaten a full breakfast and reported to a small room for an interview. There were only two chairs in the tiny space. One was empty and Major Murphy sat in the other. He’d smiled at her.

  “What’s your name?”

  She’d told him and immediately asked, “Where am I? Where is Ben Mazza?”

  Murphy shook his head. “There’s no Ben Mazza here, Miss Turan.”

  “I was with him before…” Her words trailed off. “Am I dead?”

  “What is the last memory you have?” Murphy asked quietly. “Before waking up here?”

  “Ben went down the hill toward the railroad tracks.” She blinked and shook her head. “He went to check the explosives.”

  Murphy sat a little straighter in the chair. “Explosives?”

  She nodded. “We’d emplaced them on the end of a bridge.”

  “Why?” Murphy frowned. “Was this during the war?”

  She snapped her eyes back toward his. “After.”

  “When? What was the date?”

  “The 16th of June 1946,” Aliza replied. “Our target was a railway bridge over the Nahal Kziv in Lebanon.”

  Murphy said nothing for a moment, instead consulting a small, glass device in his hands. “The Night of the Bridges.”

  Aliza shrugged. “Those were the targets, yes.”

  “That’s what the operation was called, Miss Turan.”

  “We called it Operation Markolet.”

  Murphy shrugged. “History seems to change when the victors write it. The attack on the railway bridge was by the Palmach. Were you working with them?”

  Aliza nodded. “My friend Ben Mazza and I were scouts for them. The bridge was heavily guarded, and the Palmach came under fire as they laid the explosives. We were atop a hill with rifles, providing covering fire. Ben saw something on the steep terrain below and went to check. I tried to follow him and found only a man with dark glasses. Then I woke here.”

  Murphy nodded again, his face straight and open. “You were fighting against the British, yes?”

  “Their policies stopped Jewish immigration to Palestine. For those…like me, there was no home to return to, so we chose Palestine. When we tried to go there, the British detained us and put us into camps. It was almost as if we’d never left the Nazis, that they had simply passed us along to another captor,” Aliza replied, her voice thick with emotion pent up for far too long. “All we wanted was a home.”

  “Well,” Murphy said and placed his palms on his knees. “This is your home now, Miss Turan. You are part of what we call the Lost Soldiers.”

  “I’m no soldier. I will be of no use here with you.”

  He laughed. “And yet there you were, atop a hill providing covering fire during an insurgent combat operation. I think we’ll find something you’re both good at and willing to do.”

  And despite her silent certainty that he was wrong, within two weeks, she was putting her first saddle on a whinaalani. Working with them, first as pack animals and then as mounts brought her horsemanship skills back. She relished the opportunity to ride almost any animal, and the whinnies were agile and graceful despite their size. Teaching the soldiers to ride hadn’t been easy, at first. There was a familiar gleam in some of their eyes, but like the nameless officer at Dachau, Major Murphy quickly ended any predatory ideas by ordering her trained with the M1911 pistol and allowing her to carry one at all times, if she wished. After a week on the ground, she’d eschewed doing so, especially after meeting Sergeant First Class Whittaker. The no-nonsense sergeant made sure everyone knew she was not only good at what she did, but he considered her to be one of them.

  Whittaker’s gruff voice shook the memories away and brought her back to the present. “Everything okay, Aliza?” Like Murphy, Whittaker wore the screaming eagle patch on his right shoulder.

  She let her eyes linger on the patch for a long second before she smiled and met his eyes. “I asked the captain about our route. I’d hoped to search the high ground to the north for medicinals. Not areas where you’ve patrolled before.”

  Whittaker nodded, and there was a hint of a frown at the corner of his m
outh. “There’ll be time for that.”

  “Not today, though. Right?” She smiled, hoped that the older sergeant would reciprocate.

  He did not; the radio headset attached to the shoulder of his load-bearing straps crackled to life. “Saber Nine, this is Oscar Papa Two, relay follows. Over.”

  Whittaker grabbed the headset and spun the round microphone of the radio they called a prick seven. She’d had to learn so many things quickly. Whittaker depressed the transmit button. “Oscar Papa Two, send it. Over.”

  “Saber Nine, relay from Glass Palace. Seeker Six established brief uplink. They report significant mechanical issues on the patrol. Recovery requested. They do not have Class Nine and Class Three is critical. Position two decimal five clicks from bottom of Charlie Papa Five. Enemy recon assets may be converging on the area. Quantity and type unknown. Over.”

  The military discussed everything in an abbreviated fashion, including supply and materiel. Class three referred to fuel and petroleum products. Class nine were repair parts.

  “OP Two, how do we know OpFor elements are coming if they can’t identify them?”

  “Saber Nine, they’re reporting biologics scattering behind them. Probably due to fast approach of OpFor, over.”

  Whittaker’s face went from a frown to a scowl. “Good copy, Oscar Papa Two. Relaying to Saber Six. Standby. Saber Nine, out.”

  Aliza looked him in the eye. “Is everything okay?”

  Whittaker shook his head. “I knew being under the command of a guy named Murphy was a bad omen.”

  “What do you mean?” Aliza asked and then mentally slapped herself. “Oh, I’ve heard you all talk about Murphy’s Law. ‘Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.’ Yes?”

  Whittaker grunted and nudged his mount toward the trail at the top of the rim. “That’s about it.”

  “And things just went wrong?”