How could they maroon us like this, he raged silently. The bastards! He walked along with his mind a seething tempest, until the tide of anger that had flooded his brain ebbed and reason returned. They had not been deserted or forgotten; that interpretation of events was clearly irrational. It simply could not be. Akadeans did not do such things. It was true that the band of colonists had come here to establish a secluded retreat for their now eccentric religion; to be free from the scorn of a society were so few still believed. But surely it was not possible that their brethren had turned their backs on them for that reason alone. No, that was not what had happened. Something had gone wrong; something had gone terribly wrong.
When the supply ships had ceased their deliveries and the colony’s stores fell to critical levels, drones had been systematically dispatched back to the home world, one every six months, until there were none left to be sent. Each carried messages detailing the colony’s plight. All of them could not have malfunctioned; some of them must have reached Akadea. Perhaps the beacon frequency had been changed and the Colonial Authority had neglected to inform them. But there was no evidence that Colonial Authority ships still arrived anywhere on or around Sol Three. The authority could have been disbanded by now for all the old man knew. But whatever else had happened it was clear that the reengineering of the planet had ceased, and apparently was not to be resumed. And it made no difference anyway. Even if the bureaucracy of the authority still functioned back home and had indeed changed the frequency, drones were programmed to begin broadcasting across the spectrum if they were not retrieved after a few weeks. After fifty years certainly one of them would have been found by someone. So why had there never been a reply? The old man had gone over every possibility he could imagine a thousand times, and had yet to come up with a satisfactory answer. Why bother, he asked himself. Accept it; don’t dwell on the past. No freighter filled with desperately needed supplies was going to miraculously appear in orbit high above, and there was no way for them to reach out on their own, as the colony was millenniums away from having the means to build starships. It was merely a fact of life that they were stuck here. The colonists would have to do the best they could on their own.
He reached the base of the hillside and started up the well worn path. It was not a steep climb, and the path wound from side to side as it traversed the ascent, making the trek even less arduous. Nevertheless the old man stopped halfway up for a rest, his heart beating ominously from exertion. He turned to sit on a small boulder next to the track, a spot grown familiar to him over time. He had paused here often on his slogs up to the cemetery.
From this vantage point he could see the whole of the settlement stretched out below him. It was not an encouraging vista. Although impervious to corrosion or rot, all the plastiform buildings showed, even at this distance, signs of aging and deterioration. They sat arranged in their immaculately laid out pattern, bleaching in the sun and cracking from the heat. The outlying domiciles were vacant now, their desuetude confirmed by the tall grass that surrounded them and the encroaching vegetation that would one day overwhelm them. The village seemed dead, a few thin columns of smoke rising from afternoon cook fires the only proof that it was inhabited at all. Most of the settlers were away at this time of day, hard at work either on protection or provisioning.
The old man could see, barely, the women and the young amidst the plantings, tending to the crops alongside the remaining Grangers. At the edges of the fields the men; those who were not out hunting, patrolled; armed only with spears and crude bows. The power packs for the few weapons they had brought with them from Akadea had been exhausted years ago.
The last of the remaining Sentinels moved restlessly along their assigned paths three meters above the crops, but their small numbers were of little use. Marauding birds bolted skyward at their approach, squawking loudly; they had long since been imbued with a fear of the electric sting the machines imparted. But experience had also taught them the threat radius of the robots, and they quickly settled back to earth to continue their plundering once the danger had passed. It was the old man’s opinion that the birds benefited more from the crops than did the colonists.
Slowly becoming more and more morose as he looked out over the small demesne of the settlement and the evidence of its decline, he pushed himself up off the rock and forced his haggard legs into motion, plodding deliberately up the path toward his objective. He did not look back at the village for the remainder of the climb. Instead he kept his eyes glued to the narrow groove of dry, denuded earth; formed by nothing more than the grating pressure of thousands of footfalls; that led to the summit. At last he reached the hilltop and made his way across the relatively flat expanse toward his goal, a certain gravesite. His feet knew the way to the marker. He shuffled bleakly past stones denoting the more recent deaths, making his way to the back of the necropolis and his daughter’s plot. When he reached it he halted and stood quietly, reverently, as he tried to remember only the good things about her life but could not.
“Oh, Evenia,” he said softly, his eyes closed and head shaking slowly, volitionlessly, from side to side. After a time a single word escaped his lips. “Why?” The question was posed to the air and the universe. It was a question he never ceased to ask from this spot, yet he had never expected an answer.
She had been so young, not even twenty-five years of age when she had been taken, barely on the verge of her first marriage. Her intended had been with the old man when they found her, or what was left of her. The big cat had not left much. The old man had been a younger man then, but even so all he could do was fall into a grief stricken malaise. The son in-law to be took it not nearly so well. He had howled in agony, an abruptly broken and angry man, and had rushed back to the village to gather up all the weapons that still functioned and recruit a posse to help him exact revenge. It was a mission they accomplished in less than two days. When the group marched back into the settlement it was with the cat’s hide, a pelt the young man incorporated into his wardrobe from that day forward.
He was gone now; he had been for years. He had disappeared with one of the small bands that left seeking better fortune elsewhere. Not that it mattered, the old man thought. The fiancé had changed from a fine young man into a hostile, almost unrecognizable person. A tangible sense of relief had spread over the village as word of his departure had made the rounds. Few had been sorry to find him gone.
But he was hardly the only one to have been altered by the nature of the world upon which they had been reefed. Many had taken different paths to a similar madness, and it seemed that nearly everyone was not as sane as when they had arrived.
O Creator of all, the old man wailed in his mind, what will become of us in this place? He fell to his knees and collapsed into an upright fetal ball next to his daughter’s grave, softly beseeching his God not for rescue, but only for the opportunity to be reunited with his offspring upon his death, an event he strongly suspected would soon be in the offing. The promise to his wife was also not forgotten as he uttered a small prayer on her behalf. Afterward he sat by the gravesite staring into the empty sky until the sun was low, the shadows were long, and he knew it was past time to go.
At last he rose and walked away. As he made his way back along the trail to the village, foreboding wrapped around him like cerements. In the last few hours he had finally fully accepted what should have been clear to him for decades. All of his and his neighbors’ efforts were in vain. The colony would never prosper, or even survive. What few people remained when the settlement at long last collapsed would eventually be dispersed into various groups and clans, left to their own devices to attempt to scratch survival out of this harsh and unforgiving world.
His Evenia may have been one of the lucky ones, as he was certain degeneration was all that awaited the survivors. Even now, the children in the settlement were maturing into much coarser and less erudite specimens of adolescence than their parents had ever been. And that was a trend that would c
ontinue. Despite the emphasis among the elders on leaving behind a written tableau of their expertise and experience, no one could record everything residing in their skulls. Only a fraction of what they knew would be passed on to the young.
And it would only get worse as his people died at younger and younger ages. Tomorrow’s children would be deprived of their parents at an even earlier age than today’s youth; and with those parents, knowledge; knowledge that could not be replaced; would also be taken to the grave. And as their progeny created their own lineage, future generations would be condemned to increasingly shorter and more arduous existences than those who had come before. In fifty generations the descendants of the colony would be lucky if they were able to read what had been left behind, much less write their own stories. In a hundred lifetimes they would be little more than animals. If in the end mankind somehow survived on this misbegotten world, what would humanity look like in a thousand generations? What bitter fruit, the old man wondered darkly, would this shriveling and neglected branch of the human race ultimately put forth.
CHAPTER THREE:
And All the Children Go Insane
1969 A.D.
“Lieutenant?” The word was a whisper so soft that it floated through the night like an evanescent wisp of smoke. It flowed gently past O’Keefe’s dormant consciousness, and then dissipated into nothingness. The request had been barely audible over the raindrops that struck his poncho, and he was glad that it was gone now, for even as he drowsed his mind recognized the burdens implicit in the title and the rank, and wanted nothing of them. Only rest was important now. “Lieutenant!” This time the whisper was harsher, and shot from the gloom like a sniper’s round. Lieutenant Achilles Aeneas O’Keefe, United States Marine Corps, snapped to full alertness, abandoning the semi-conscious state that passed for sleep in the bush.
“What is it?” he hissed. He had only been awake for two seconds and already he was aggravated. A small pool of collected rain water had poured from his poncho on to one of the few still dry sections of his uniform when he had twitched upon waking. The implication of the draining water also made him suddenly cognizant of the increased intensity of the rain. When he had drifted off it had been merely a misty drizzle; now it drummed steadily on the plastic hood that surrounded his helmet.
Baker, the platoon RTO; his high, Harlem-accented voice modulating an octave above its usual pitch and betraying a hint of unease; replied only loud enough to be heard over the rain. “It’s the LP, sir. Teejay’s got something.”
“Shit,” O’Keefe breathed. “Gimme!” He slid against the muddy side of the fighting hole until he could feel Baker next to him. The RTO dutifully found his proffered hand, pressing the handset into his palm. O’Keefe pushed his helmet up a notch to put the receiver to his ear, grimacing as more water found its way beneath his poncho.
“This is Six. What’s up, Teejay? Over.” He whispered softly into the microphone, making an effort to project a confidence he did not really feel but that he knew was a prerequisite for command.
Teejay’s anxious voice came back, barely audible over the electronic hum of the radio. “Charlie’s in the treeline, sir. We got boocoo noise out here. Sounds like they’re settin’ up some heavy shit, sir; and it sounds like a lot of ‘em. Sounds like a whole regiment in there. No shit, sir, I think we’re looking at a real number ten. Over.”
O’Keefe did his best to supply a measured response. “Okay, you and Thor get back here di di mau, but be careful and do it quietly. Stick to your route, and remember there’s Claymores close in. So don’t scare anybody; let us know before you come through the perimeter. Over.”
The voice that came back sounded steadier now and shaded with gratitude. “You don’t hafta tell me twice—I mean, affirmative; sir. Out.”
O’Keefe turned his head in Baker’s direction. “Get me the FB. Then find the sarge. Tell him to get everybody locked and loaded and then get your ass back here. And don’t forget to tell ‘em about the LP.” With that he rolled over on his belly and pushed himself up far enough to peer out over the edge of the fighting hole. There was nothing to see save a wall of darkness. A tiger could have been crouching a few yards away, its muscles tensing to spring at his face, and he would have never known. And he damn sure couldn’t see the treeline.
His other senses were equally as useless. The only sound that reached his ears besides the rain was Baker’s muffled voice attempting to raise the firebase. Inhaling deeply through his nose, he sampled the air for any scent but found only the ubiquitous odor of rotting vegetation that permeated the landscape throughout the rainy season. Not that he had ever smelled a VC. As far as he could tell they smelled like the jungle. He only tried because of the stories he’d heard, stories of Charlie being able to find Americans on even the darkest nights just by their foreign odor. He had no idea if it were true or not, but somehow the VC always seemed to know just where the Marines had dug in.
It’s just like everything else in this damned country, O’Keefe thought, you never know anything for sure. Nothing he had ever been taught, in the military or elsewhere, had prepared him for Vietnam. He had no idea what to believe any more. Most of the supposed truths he had accepted all his life came to naught out here, while brutality he would never have thought existed even in the deepest, darkest corners of men’s souls bubbled to the surface on a near daily basis.
As far as he could tell there were only about three things you could really count on out in the bush. One was that every non-American couldn’t care less if you lived or died; another was that the only people you could trust implicitly were members of your own platoon, not counting any FNGs; and lastly, that Charlie didn’t play. That was the one undeniable truth of the war; the Viet Cong were worthy adversaries.
Sometimes as he lay in his fighting hole at night he wondered how their commanders did it. How could you motivate men in their circumstances? They were stuck out here in this godforsaken shithole year round. A good night for them was any night they didn’t have to attack the Americans; it was a night stuck in a wet, dimly lit tunnel with only a cold bowl of rice for food. They had minimal supplies, virtually no supporting arms, and were facing an enemy with what must have seemed to them like unlimited, staggering firepower. Yet still they fought like hellhounds on steroids. As much as he hated the little bastards, O’Keefe could not help but feel admiration for their fortitude and their courage.
Baker nudged him in the ribs and O’Keefe rolled over onto his back and slid down into the hole, shoulder to shoulder with the radioman. Baker pushed the handset into O’Keefe’s chest, holding it there until the lieutenant took it from him. “I got Arty, sir,” he murmured. “Be right back.” With that he abandoned the radio and slithered through the muck and out of the hole.
O’Keefe pulled out his map and hunched over it, attempting to keep any stray beams from his small flashlight from escaping the confines of his poncho. There was no need to give the VC an aiming point. When at last he was situated, he spoke. “This is Delta Six, over.”
Big Joe Holland’s voice suddenly erupted from the handset, too loudly it seemed. “Hey Flakman, is that you? Over.” He used the appellation the other officers had derived from O’Keefe’s first and middle initials. O’Keefe flinched, angry and ready to berate the big man, but thought better of it. Don’t lose it, Hill, he told himself. The handset is right in your ear. If you couldn’t hear the VC packing in their shit, they damn sure can’t hear a voice on the radio through your head in a foxhole in the pouring rain. Nobody’s that good.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he replied as loudly as he dared. “I got a feeling we’re gonna need your guns in a big way tonight, man. My LP tells me we got boocoo VC in the treeline in front of us. Over.”
“No sweat,” came the confident reply. “You coordinate, we obliterate. Plus, we’re having a pretty quiet night. I guess the gooners don’t like the rain any more than we do. You want we start off with some illum? Over.”
Big Joe spoke in a bra
sh, fearless manner; and it was not an attitude fostered by spending his time inside the concertina wire that surrounded the firebase. O’Keefe had seen him, more than once, out on the perimeter during an enemy attack pumping out rounds like a bushrat. The burly lieutenant had been an offensive lineman in college; to him protecting his big howitzers was little different than protecting his quarterback. It was part of his job, and he did it to the best of his ability and without hesitation.
“No, definitely not,” O’Keefe answered. “My LP isn’t back yet. I don’t want to light ‘em up out there. Just give me a Willie Peter at, um,” he hastily rechecked the coordinates, “147820 North, 1081456 East. Over.” Encryption was needless; Charlie clearly already knew the Marines were there.
No sooner had O’Keefe spoken than he heard the thoomp, thoomp, thoomp of enemy mortars. “Incoming!” he yelled instinctively, no longer concerned with quiet. The last syllable hadn’t died in his throat before Baker landed heavily in the fighting hole beside him.
“Shit,” the RTO grunted loudly, “I don’t think the sarge got to everybody, but I bet they’re ready to rock and roll now!” Both men rolled into balls at the bottom of the hole, waiting for the shells to impact. A few, seemingly never-ending seconds later, the explosions erupted far to their rear. Well Charlie, O’Keefe thought, you don’t quite know exactly where we are, do you? The VC’s ignorance wouldn’t last long. He was already aware of bursts from M-16s close by and AK fire coming from the direction of the tree line.
“On the way,” Holland’s voice said from the handset. Time crawled as O’Keefe waited. The mortars fired again. He held the handset tightly to his ear as he hugged the muddy bottom of the fighting hole. At last Holland’s voice was again in his ear with just two words; “Splash! Over.”
The Empty Warrior Page 4
