Except, a small voice wondered, what if somebody figures a lone rear guard holding out to the end makes better footage? What if somebody figures a rescue column might take too many losses? Dead heroes are good, noble examples who don't do any of the not-so-noble things living humans are prone to. Live heroes can be a pain in the ass, especially when they happen to be a Sergeant with a reputation for being just that already. So maybe the rescue group heads out just a little too late. Lots of suspense, but then damn shame. A hero, a safely dead hero who can be sanctimoniously elevated to near-sainthood, a hero who gave his all for his country and his buddies. Yeah, wonderful ratings. And everybody would get to see what a great thing the Sergeant did. No, Stark thought fiercely, Vic won't let them. She, Gomez, even this Lieutenant, they'll come back. Unless they couldn't make it back in time. Unless someone stalled, didn't tell them what was really going down.
The motion alert pulsed as more figures scrambled into motion, covered by the unrelenting fire. Got a heavy-weapons unit here now, must be. Too damn much firepower for a bunch of foot troops. He carefully gauged the angle, waited, then detonated one of the claymores as two figures neared its blast cone. One enemy was hurled back against nearby rocks to lie broken across them while the second spun suddenly to the side and fell, a slow-motion sprawl into the dust.
Okay. That'll slow them. Now they've got to screen for my mines. Another glance at the Tac. The Platoon had to be close to safety now. Anytime. My Tac will estimate the Platoon's clear and I can pull out. Just roll right and down. Drop to the plain and run while they're still trying to decide if I'm really gone.
System alarms pointed skyward as Stark watched the tracks of high-trajectory rounds arcing in from the enemy rear. Damn it all! Freeze and pray the suit camo works long enough and maybe they're short on shells. No top cover here. Not if he didn't want to be trapped. And he had to be ready to fall back. Anytime now.
Multiple rounds burst overhead, casting clustered warheads across the area. The suit's camo held, or Stark would have died instantly under the impacts of a dozen homing warheads. Failing to locate a target, the warheads dropped in random patterns, detonating in hopes of causing damage to hidden foes. A searing pain hit Stark's right leg as a warhead went off not far away. Bad. Real bad. He scanned the damage display. The suit had sealed the penetrations, but his leg had been badly messed up. The med kit hummed harder and the pain and dizziness dropped away, replaced with a false sense of well-being.
Not over yet. Tac check. Almost time. Relief column should be heading out. I don't need both legs to roll. I can still get clear. He carefully checked his ammo again. Two grenades, one mine left out front. Can't move yet. They'd lock in on me too fast. Pump out both grenades to distract, set the mine on autodetonate. Then I roll. Piece of cake.
Down below and in front more figures moved, partially obscured in his sight by a ragged red rim around his vision. Can't use grenades yet. Gotta save them for when I pull out. He brought his weapon up one-handed, balancing it on the rocks before him, to aim and fire automatically, figures downrange dropping as they came under fire. No telling if there were any hits. Incoming fire around Stark was too intense, hazing his scan with concussions and energy bursts. He blinked furiously, wondering why he couldn't get the dancing red flecks obscuring his sight to go away. Torn grass blades seemed to wave among the red flecks, incongruous against the bare, dead rock all around.
A Devil's Foot slammed into the rock face above him and spat a flurry of arrowlike flechets downward. Two hit, piercing completely through Stark and his armor and on into the rock below. The suit instantly sealed the holes as the med kit hummed frantically, trying to overcome nature with a tidal wave of chemicals. Oh, God. Not gonna make it, am I? Too late. Too late. Not going anywhere now. Just like all the grunts I left back on the knoll. Finally my turn. For a moment, Stark felt an unnatural clarity, free of pain and loss. But all the others got out this time, didn't they? Safe. Platoon's clear. My Squad's clear. Did my job. Didn't let them down.
Pain hit hard through the thick haze of drugs. A roaring filled his ears. Somewhere in front the enemy must still be advancing, but Stark could no longer see, and something kept his fingers from clenching to fire his weapon. Against the fury of the enemy barrage, his battle armor continued calmly reciting its own damaged systems status, one more sound that merged into the chaos around him. Stark thought he heard his name being spoken or called, but the last traces of concentration dissolved into a jumble of broken sounds and images. The red haze grew to fill his vision, blotting out all traces of the phantom grass, and a black curtain fell across his mind, one with the rocks and the dust, the white light and the black shadows.
PART THREE
Tell the Spartans
First, there was light, blurred into great, soft dollops of almost brightness. The dollops condensed slowly, forming bars of brilliance against light blue veined with cracks as if the sky were splitting into fragments and letting dead space spill through. Then eyes finally focused and the broken sky resolved into peeling, painted rock strung with fluorescent lights.
"I'm not dead." The words didn't quite come out, hanging up somewhere within a rusty throat.
"No, Ethan, you're not dead."
Stark turned his head with great care, until the face of Vic Reynolds swung into his field of vision. "Then you're no angel."
"Not yet and probably never." Vic's face contorted with sudden anger as she jabbed a finger so close to Stark's nose that he flinched in reaction. "You idiot! Don't ever do something that goddamn stupid again!"
"You're welcome."
"You said you wouldn't stay too long. Well, guess what? You were about one second this side of a body bag when we came back over that ridge with a brace of tanks and four APCs behind us. If one of the APCs hadn't been rigged as a life-support field ambulance you wouldn't have lived long enough to reach friendly lines."
Stark managed a smile, wondering why his face felt so stiff, abruptly glad he couldn't see himself in a mirror. "I knew you'd come back with reinforcements."
Vic sat back, eyes aflame. "Then you were wrong. The tanks, the APCs, they were going to sit on their fat butts while you got shot to hell. First we pleaded, then we threatened, then we started back on our own. That's when they followed. Brigade couldn't afford to lose all of us. The civs would have been real unhappy with that many casualties and the General would've been sacked, great vid ratings for your heroic sacrifice notwithstanding. So we got back to you, rolled over a bunch of enemy infantry who thought they'd just won, picked up your damn-near-lifeless carcass and hightailed home with half the enemy expeditionary force snapping at our rears. Understand all that, Ethan? They would have left you." She leaned forward, staring into his eyes as if seeking answers there. "Why the hell did you do it, Ethan?"
"I had my reasons."
"I know." Vic ignored Stark's reaction, speaking crisply, her words clear and smooth in the hush of the hospital room. "Patterson's Knoll. You were there."
"How'd you find out?"
"I looked it up, on a hunch. Worst disaster in recent American military history. About a decade ago. Two companies of U.S. soldiers, trapped on an open hill and cut to pieces because no one could get to them in time. Only three soldiers managed to escape during the night before the position got overrun the next day. You were one of them, Ethan. Why didn't you ever tell me?"
Stark studied the white-painted wall before his face as if it held some special significance. "Never talk about it."
"So I noticed." Vic's hand reached out, turning Stark's head with carefully precise force to face her again. "So that's your demon. You never really left that hilltop, did you, Ethan? Part of you is still there, on that grassy knoll."
Stark tried to escape her eyes, but his head was held steady in Vic's grip. "I left a lot of friends up there, Vic. They died. I didn't."
"Fate works that way."
"There had to be a reason"' Stark insisted. "I survived for a reason, and maybe that
reason was just to make sure it never happened to anybody else. Maybe I lived so I can make sure other soldiers don't have to die the same way."
"And maybe it was all chance. The luck of the draw."
"Dammit, Vic, it had to mean something!" Stark was trembling, he realized, as a hundred points of pain sprang into being where his body had been battered by projectiles meant to kill. The bedside med monitor hummed louder, as if disapproving, and began dosing more drugs into Stark's intravenous feeds. His pain fell away, along with the agitation, not really gone, but somewhere behind a wall where they could rage without hurting him. "It had to mean something," he repeated.
Vic stared down somberly. "Now do you want to talk about it?"
"I dunno."
"Ethan, I've been in nasty battles. Plenty of them."
"Not like that one."
"And it was a long time ago."
"No." Stark shook his head, eyes staring into the distance. "No. It's every night, Vic. Every night." He looked back at her, eyes slightly unfocused from the combination of medications and memories. "They hit us all day, raking us with small arms, dropping artillery and mortars on the knoll. Couldn't dig in 'cause there was rock right under the surface. Nothing to hide behind, nothing but the grass. Grass cut by shrapnel and spattered with blood and trampled into the dirt." He fell silent for a moment.
"Were you hit?" Vic prodded gently.
"Me?" Stark questioned, then shuddered. "No. Private Ethan Stark didn't get hit. I'll never know why. I was so damned young, and so damned scared and so damned tired I couldn't even hold my rifle anymore and I just hugged the dirt and stared at the damned grass and prayed. Finally it got dark. New Moon, thank God, so it really was dark. They couldn't see us anymore. And I couldn't see all the bodies around me. They were my friends, Vic."
"I know. Why didn't the enemy come up on the knoll and finish you off?"
"Scared of us. Even though they'd kicked our butts all day, they were still scared of going up against us in the dark. That's what Kate guessed."
"Kate?"
"Yeah. Corporal Kate Stein. Big sister, I called her. She called me little brother. Kept me alive, taught me how to fight smart." Stark blinked rapidly for a moment. "My armor had died already. Power supply exhausted. I pulled it off, went looking for anybody else still alive, and found her."
"She'd survived, too?"
"Sorta." Stark gulped at the memory. "Lost both legs. Only her suit's med kit had kept her alive until then." Oh, Christ, Kate. I'll get you out. I promise. Carry you. Carry you all the way.
No. Get out of here. You and anybody else who can still move.
I won't leave you. I won't. I'm staying with you and the other wounded.
No you ain't, little brother. Waste of your life. Mine's gone. Forget it. Save yours.
I'm not leaving you for them!
Won't be alive when they get here, bro. Got a grenade handy, though, just in case.
No. No. Look, there's got to be relief coming.
Relief? Her bitter cough had been weak and wet. Get real. They've jammed our calls for help, they've got antiair enough to hold offevac assets, and all our stupid, worthless officers who hung us out to dry on this hill are dead. Any relief that's coming won't get here in time.
There's got to be another way.
Sometimes the only other ways are worse. Get out of here, Ethan. I didn't teach you to fight so you could die for nothing, and staying here would be worse than useless.
I. . .
Go. You can't save me. Save someone else someday.
I will.
"Ethan?" Vic leaned close again, one hand on his cheek. "You there?"
"Yeah."
"What happened? To you and Stein?"
"She couldn't be helped. Couldn't be moved. She had a grenade, though." Vic nodded, face grim. "Told me to get the hell out of there." Stark smiled, so suddenly that Vic frowned in surprise. "You know what else she told me? To unload my weapon before I tried to sneak through the enemy line."
"Unload your weapon? Why?"
"'Cause if you've got a loaded weapon, and you get scared, you'll shoot," Stark explained. "And that would mean they'd be all over me. But if my weapon was empty, I'd hide instead and maybe save my butt."
Vic nodded again, this time judiciously. "Good advice. I take it you followed it."
"Uh-huh. We had a hard time getting down off the knoll into the vegetation, those of us who could still move. We made sure all the survivors who couldn't move had weapons first, though. The enemy spotted our movement, but some of us made it to the tree line. God, it was dark, Vic. Never seen anything so black, even up here. Couldn't see the enemy until you fell over them. Couldn't move without worrying about tripping over stuff you couldn't see. Longest night of my life."
"But they didn't spot you."
"Almost. Almost. Kate saved me, Vic. Twice, they were so close I tried to fire, but I couldn't because my weapon wasn't loaded. I was still cursing her each time when they turned away. Some other guys, I heard them open up. They died real fast." He paused. "It was almost morning when I heard heavy artillery again. They hit the knoll really hard. Then there was a lot of small-arms fire. Grenades. It didn't last long." Another pause. "I kept moving, fast as I could. A few hours later I sorta fell into the arms of an American patrol coming up the trail."
"A relief force? That close?"
"Not close enough and not strong enough." Stark closed his eyes briefly. "I told them what had happened. They didn't want to believe me, thought I was a deserter, but soon two other survivors got picked up by other patrols and told the same story. Thanks to the warning, that 'relief force' was able to retreat fast enough to save itself."
Vic leaned back, biting her lower lip. "At least we kicked butt later. I've talked to people who were in on the retaliatory strikes."
"Yeah, we kicked butt," Stark agreed, his tone acid. "But all the butt-kicking in the world couldn't bring the dead back, could it?"
"No," Vic nodded.
"Nothin' else I could do. Nothin' else anybody could do. Not by then."
"What else could you have done earlier, Ethan?"
"I could've stayed, Vic. Up on the knoll, with the ones who couldn't move."
"Until you all died together at dawn? Now that wouldn't have meant anything, Ethan. I'm glad you listened to Kate Stein."
Stark lay silent for a moment. "I'm still listening."
"Good. Save your sacrifices for when they matter."
"Like holding off the pursuit across the dust plain so our Platoon could escape, you mean?" Stark needled in sudden triumph.
Vic glared at him. "Dying in place wasn't the plan. You were supposed to delay them and then run."
"There wasn't any plan, and I had to hold them long enough to keep you safe."
"I don't need you playing hero to keep me safe! I want you alive and watching out for your Squad. You're a helluva lot more valuable to everyone that way. Remember that, and remember nobody was supposed to go back to haul your nearly lifeless carcass to safety."
Stark tried a shrug, wincing as a body cast halted the movement. "I knew you'd come back."
"Then you must think I'm as stupid as you are." Vic stood, shaking her head. "Ethan, we can't afford to lose you. I'm not telling you to forget the past, but don't let it rule you. Be more careful." She dug in one pocket, pulling forth a packet that she pitched onto Stark's chest in a dreamy low-gravity trajectory. "Your very own Silver Star, along with four Purple Hearts for our heroic Sergeant Stark. Got that, Ethan? Four Purple Hearts. You get one, you're lucky. You get two, you should be dead. You get three, you usually are dead. You got four, Ethan. Next time you're getting shot at, for Pete's sake, try to duck." Vic strode out, letting Stark's privacy curtain drop slowly shut, some of its creases holding their own against Luna's weak tug. Stark lay still, staring up at the cracked sky over his bed.
Sanchez stopped by later, a brief nod, the barest flicker of a smile turning up the edges of his mouth for a
moment as he asked, "You okay?"
"Okay as can be expected."
Another brief nod. "Your Squad's fine. Gomez, she's keeping them in line. You got a good Corporal there."
"I know." Stark tried to reach out a hand, halting in frustration as his body cast limited the movement. "Thanks for keeping an eye on them, Sanch."
"Least I could do." Sanchez started to leave, pausing briefly on the way out. "Thanks for holding them off."
"No problem."
Sanchez might have quirked another smile as he left, but Stark couldn't be sure.
There weren't many other visitors as the days of healing turned into weeks. Even with the best medical technology, the human body required a certain amount of time to fix the sort of damage the best weapons technology could inflict. Stark knew only senior enlisted or officers were allowed to visit the medical wards, and both Vic and Sanch had their own Squads to watch over while the war continued its apparently endless course. One day, however, some unexpected visitors stopped by, bringing a fair share of confusion and concern in their wake.
Stark's War Page 17
