by Bobby Adair
Disappointed with his answer, I tell him, “You’ve been in this shit before. Is that all you’ve got—vague bullshit?”
“Get used to it. This isn’t a training sim with multiple choice answers anymore.” His dismissiveness seems a little harsh. Drilling his hard eyes through my faceplate, he says, “I’ll apologize if you want me to.”
I roll my eyes and look down his hall. “Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of camaraderie between men who’ve gone to war together?”
Brice rolls out another of his bleak chuckles. “Maybe I’m out of practice. Maybe I’m not in the mood.” He rescans his hall and glances back toward the airlock door. “Everybody dies.”
I nod, conversationally, out of habit, polite agreement, I don’t know. I stop, and I start ticking through the numbers in my head again. Holy mother of flaming dog shit! I don’t know if anybody in my company is still alive.
Maybe everybody does die.
Phil and Penny, my two best friends are dead.
Wait.
There’s Jill. Perhaps she’s it. The portion of her platoon not killed in the cruiser assault is all that’s left of my command.
“See,” says Brice.
I look up from wherever my eyes had wandered. Brice is scrutinizing me.
“See?” he repeats. “Something in your brain triggers when they start dying by the dozen. Like the emotion meter redlines and blows a fuse, so you forget to feel it. That’s how you keep moving.”
I’m not sure that’s true. It keeps coming up and bothering me. I thought the numbers were a refuge from the emotion, but I find the dismal death counts turning on me.
“When you stop and breathe,” he says. “When you take a minute to stare at a door that doesn’t open, when you have time to sleep, when you’re in a platoon compartment looking at forty faces that will all soon be dead, those are the times when it comes back, the memories, the emotions. They’ll ruin you as a soldier if you let them. In the quiet times, you have to deal with that shit in your head. When you do, it hurts. Blown fuses are easier.”
Brice looks up and down each of the halls again.
“How many have died under your command?” I regret asking even as the last syllable crosses the comm link between us.
For the tiniest of moments, his eyes look glassed with tears—that passes with a blink, and a face turned hard. “I stopped counting when I stopped sleeping.”
“How do you deal with it?” I’m still trying to tally the number of dead who followed my orders to their end.
“I don’t have any Freudian hoodoo, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I glance away. It was what I was asking.
“I’m wired for it,” says Brice, “I guess, as much as anybody who’s not a sociopath. I handle it. Yeah, I lose sleep. I’m angry sometimes for no good reason.” And then his laugh flows out, black as tar, sticky and hot. “And fragging a shitbird officer without a blink of remorse. There’s no justice in this war, on our planet, perhaps not anywhere in the whole damn universe. Maybe justice is a fantasy backward civilizations like ours think is real, like sun gods and fairies. I don’t know.” He takes a deep breath. “When I pulled that trigger and plugged Captain Milliken, for just a second there, justice existed. It made some of the shit better.”
I nod, not out of courtesy, because I wonder if he’s right. I wonder more if I’ll become as jaded when I’ve been in the war as long as he has. Like I’m going to live that long. That seems funny to me. So I laugh, echoing Brice.
The humor of it is contagious, and Brice joins back in. “I think you’re wired like me. When the metal is in the air, and the Troglodytes are coming to kill you, you keep a level head, and you don’t dwell on the death. You’re not squeamish when the blood is boiling off in the vacuum. You’re a natural. My advice, don’t let your head get in the way too much. Right now, you react well, with good instincts. Unfortunately, one thing you need to accept from the get-go, everybody dies. They were dead the moment they put on that shitty orange suit. That will be the truth, until we run out of people on earth or we kill every damn last one of these apes and all their little gray popsicle-dick bosses. You and me, we’ll die along the way. Accept that, and you’ll be fine. We knocked out four Trog ships today, and for a moment, we’d conquered a Trog base. Yet there are nearly a thousand Trogs running around this rock looking for us, and another ten thousand up on that ship. I’d be surprised if we don’t die fighting in these caves today. Too bad we don’t have one of those MSS propaganda crews on hand to record it all. At least we’d be heroes back on earth.”
Chapter 13
My d-pad signals something incoming. I tap it, open the message, click the attachment, and see it’s a map.
Blair’s on the comm. “We’re in Tarlow’s control room.”
I inform Brice.
He smiles. “Now you know how long we wait, if you’re still interested in the answer.”
“Tarlow just sent you a map,” says Blair.
“I got it,” I tell her, “but it looks like only one level.”
“He’s sending maps of the others.”
My d-pad chimes, and I download each image. Not exactly the 3-D interactive, full-color, hologram style I was hoping for. Then again, I wasn’t expecting to actually get the maps, either.
“Each level is different,” says Tarlow over the comm. “Slightly in some cases, a lot in others, depending on how deep you are. You’ll have to open the map for whichever level you find yourself on. Right now you’re on sublevel one. The first image I sent.”
“Got it,” I tell him. “Blair, what’s the story with the cameras? There’s nobody at this airlock.”
“Checking now,” she answers with no hint at the friction between us.
That worries me.
She replies, “Tarlow says there are nearly three hundred cameras mounted around the complex. Nearly half are functioning. To make matters worse, there are only six monitors down here, and it’s a pain to scroll through.”
“Let me control it,” says Tarlow, apparently trying to push one of the troops off the computer. “You’ll break it.”
“Sounds like fun,” I tell her. “We’ll wait here until you give us an airlock to head to.” Better than wandering around and praying. “How many lead to the surface?”
“Seventeen,” she answers.
I tell Brice.
To Blair, I say, “Try and keep an eye out for the Trogs coming our way, if you don’t mind.”
“Working on—” she stops.
“What?” Something is wrong. It’s an easy guess.
Brice notices the look on my face. He’s patient. He doesn’t press. He raises his weapon to his shoulder and points it in one direction down the corridor, and then the other.
“Trogs, coming your way,” says Blair, urgently.
The light above the airlock door at the end of the short hall flashes red.
Brice sees it and steps into the main corridor. He wants to use the wall as cover from any fire that might come from that direction.
Eyes still on the airlock door, expecting Trogs to come out, I step around the corner.
Before I can tell Brice it’s Trogs, not troops, in the airlock, Brice’s railgun bursts a fast series of dull pops—high-velocity rounds tearing through the air.
The sound startles me. They don’t make any sound in the vacuum we’ve been fighting in.
“Trogs!” Brice shouts. “Down the corridor!”
“Blair!” I call. “Who’s in the airlock?”
“Trogs. I told you.”
Shit.
She doesn’t even know about the ones in the main corridor.
I flip my weapon to full auto and leap across the corridor so I can see down to the end without Brice in the way. Even as I’m trying to make out my targets in the distance, I pull the trigger.
The hall fills with tracer-like streaks. Air sizzles and pops. Rounds hit the rock walls and explode in shards of sharp stone.
&nb
sp; “What’s happening?” Blair asks, as she starts shouting orders to Tarlow.
I can’t make out how many Trogs are down there. I see bodies falling, and others jumping into side passages or through doorways. Some are turning their backs and running, exposing their vulnerable side.
“Make ‘em pay,” Brice tells me.
“How many do you see?” I pull the trigger, noticing most of Brice’s shots are hitting the walls up and down the hall. “Dammit, you’re wasting ammo! What’s wrong?”
“Not wasting!” he shouts.
Shots are coming back at us—I can’t see the shooters through all the dust and debris blown off the wall.
And they can’t see me!
Then I understand. Brice created a smokescreen for us.
“Kane! Kane!” Blair’s worried, but I’m kinda busy.
I pull back into the side hall, take out one of my two remaining C4 blocks and stick it to the wall at shoulder height next to a sign that indicates the cafeteria is to the left.
“Time to go!” shouts Brice.
“One sec.”
He glances over, clearly irritated, then sees what I’m doing. “Hurry.”
I take a quick look at the airlock door. The light flashes yellow. Using my d-pad, I set the charge for a timed detonation of forty seconds, enough time for the Trogs to come out of the airlock, head toward the main hall, and pause as they figure out something is going on.
God, I hope the timing works out.
“Ready!”
Brice glances at me, turns, and runs.
I max my defensive grav and follow him at full speed in the direction of the cafeteria.
Chapter 14
“Blair,” I shout as I run, “if Tarlow has cameras in this part of sub one, we could use some intel.”
Brice rounds a corner, sliding as he goes, and hits the wall.
Right behind him and running just as fast, I hit the wall, too. My defensive grav bounces me down to the floor and then up off the opposite wall.
“Turn that shit down,” Brice yells as he runs on ahead.
I’m spinning head over heels, and it takes a moment to get my feet back under me.
Brice is well ahead by the time I’m running again.
I crank down my defensive grav though I’m agonizing over whether it’s the right thing to do. The field probably already saved me from a shot in the back. Brice is twenty meters ahead now, and the chasing Trogs are twenty meters closer.
An explosion thunders and a shockwave hits me, knocking me down face-first. The grav bounces me right back up, and I impact the wall again.
“Goddammit!” I adjust the deflective grav even further, find my feet, lose some time to the pursuing Trogs, and start running again. I don’t see Brice. The passage is empty ahead of me. I hit the comm. “Brice, can you hear me?” No immediate response. “Blair, where’d Brice go?”
“We’re trying,” she calls, caught up in the excitement as if she were in the hall with us. “I had a camera. Two of them in the main corridor, and they just went black.”
Ahead, far down the hall, I see a helmet poke out of a doorway. I skid to a halt as I bring my rifle up.
“It’s me!” Brice shouts, raising a palm. Now that we’re in line-of-sight, his signal reaches me again.
I lower my railgun and run.
“Where are you?” Blair asks. “All I see are dead Trogs and debris in the air.”
“Off the main corridor,” I pant. “Last sign I saw said ‘cafeteria this way’.”
I hear Tarlow rattling off something as he works. “There!”
“Got you,” Blair tells me, suddenly calm.
Brice ducks in through the doorway and I see there’s a sign attached to the wall by the door.
“Definitely the cafeteria,” I tell Blair. “We’re going in. Please tell me there’s a back way out.”
“Yes, yes!” Tarlow shouts at me. “The other side of the cafeteria exits to a parallel hall, and through the back of the kitchen there’s a doorway leading to a service lift.”
“Trogs?” I ask. I already know there aren’t any inside, or Brice wouldn’t have waved me to follow. “Which way to safety?”
“Looking,” Blair tells me, and then to Tarlow she yells, “You need to be faster at changing cameras.”
“I’m going as fast as I can, you hemorrhoidal shrew!” Apparently, Tarlow has a short fuse. “This system… it’s just pieces, scraps.”
Good God, I was hoping for a tactical advantage with the cameras, and all I’m seeing is another layer of clusterfuck. I hit the double swinging doors, and I’m in the cafeteria. The bulbs in the ceiling are burning daylight bright. I spot Brice across the basketball court-sized space, fingering a control panel on the wall.
He glances back and me and jogs my way. “How close are they?
I’m out of breath and adrenaline is beating me up from the inside. “I didn’t look.”
“Well, dammit, do!”
I unfreeze my feet, step back to the door, and peek out. Down at the turn in the hall, a few Trogs are tentatively coming around the corner, scanning the walls for booby traps.
“At the corner.” I smile wickedly, because I know my bomb did more than kill some. “Slow. They’re expecting another trap.”
Brice laughs, “That was good thinking, fast thinking, planting that charge. How many are left?”
“Blair,” I call, “I need a Trog count. How many are out there?”
“The hall on the other side of the cafeteria is clear.” Blair is rattling out the words fast and accurate. “The camera in the service lift is out. In the hall you and Brice used to access the cafeteria, the camera is mounted down at the end. I can see what you saw when you peeked out a second ago, only my view is worse.”
“How many are coming?” I ask.
“Maybe ten so far. Fifteen now.”
“Fifteen plus,” I tell Brice.
He’s kicking chairs, and realizes almost immediately their magnetized feet are holding them to the floor. He starts jerking them up and setting them adrift in the light-g. “Three days?” he asks. “They’ll hang in the air for three days?”
I shrug and nod. I don’t understand what he’s doing. “Something like that.”
“Help me, man.”
I reach for the nearest chair, three or four meters inside the door.
“Not that one.”
It’s alone, just sitting there. “What?”
“All that bouncing off the walls rattled your brains, Kane. Take a deep breath, get in the game. I set a charge under that one.”
Duh!
“Leave some of the other chairs on the floor, so they don’t seem out of place. The rest in the air.”
I run through the cafeteria, picking up tables and chairs, sending them off in different directions. It’s 3D billiards with utilitarian furniture.
“Blair,” I call, “I need a status.”
“Maybe twenty in the hall,” she tells me. “Pretty brave. Walking fast. You’ve got maybe thirty seconds. What the hell are you doing in the cafeteria?”
“Thirty seconds,” I tell Brice.
He points to the door across the room, the one exiting to the other hallway. “Move over there. Stand in the open doors. Wait for the Trogs to come through. Make sure they see. Shoot a few if you have to, but miss. Then duck.”
“Where are you—”
“Do it,” he tells me. “Wait for the blast, then hurry your ass back in here and be ready to shoot. Oh, and max your deflective grav once you’re in the hall, just in case. Don’t forget to jack it back down before you return.”
I’m thinking that’ll be the best time to have it maxed—well maybe the second-best. I see his point. Poor suit control isn’t worth the added defense. He’s lived through two years of this war. I’ve barely lived through two days. I need to listen to him. I run to the far doors.
Chapter 15
I pull both doors open and push the handles into magnet catches on the wall
s to keep them there. I peek into the narrow corridor, just in case. It’s empty. All the Trogs are in the other hall.
“Don’t trust me?” Blair asks, actual humor in her voice, except definitely no laugh.
“Of course I do.” Empty words, but my adrenaline is still coursing, my brain is on full alert, multi-tasking my way through everything now, max computational speed. For an organic brain anyway.
I turn back toward the cafeteria.
Where the hell did Brice go?
“In the kitchen,” he comms. “Behind the buffet counter.”
In hushed tones, Blair tells me, “The Trogs will be at the door on the other side of the cafeteria in a moment.”
I don’t say anything about the unnecessary whisper. All of us humans suffer from our upbringing. “How many?”
“Just the twenty-five or so.”
Just.
I laugh. Oh, why the hell not?
I step into the corridor and put my back to a wall beside the open door. The Trogs coming into the cafeteria won’t be able to see me.
“What are you doing?” Brice is pissed.
“This’ll work better,” I say. “Trust me.”
“Yes, Major.”
I’m guessing that’ll be the way he addresses me from now on when he’s not happy. If we live through this. “Blair, tell me when they’re inside.”
“Looking through the doors now,” she tells me. “They’re confused about the floating chairs. They’re conferring in the hall.”
Waiting.
“They’ve pulled the doors open,” she says. “Several are looking inside again.”
That’ll have to be my cue.
I jump across the open doorway like I was running up the corridor and stop as if I’m surprised to see the Trogs across the cafeteria. I bring my railgun to my hip and fire a spray of slugs into the wall above their heads as I fake a stumble and fall out of their view.
At least that’s what they see.
Once out of sight, I throw my back against the wall and raise my rifle, ready to ambush any Trogs who come through. “Brice! Brice! They’re yours.”
I hear his voice, but there’s too much static to understand.
“They’re all coming inside now,” says Blair. “Not running. Not hurrying. No, not all. Half of them. Most of them.”
