by Jean Johnson
“Not good enough, Corporal!” Rising, Ferrar followed her out into the drizzling rain.
Ia walked only a few yards before squatting and digging through the branching, reddish, local version of grass. Cupping the rock she needed in her fist, she straightened with another grunt and a press of her free arms to her ribs. Without a word of explanation, Ia strode on, letting him catch up to her. Only when they reached one of the makeshift lanes between the rows of tents did she stop. Stop, and point at the ground.
“Wait here. Right here. Don’t move.”
“Corporal—”
Ia held up her empty hand, silencing him. “Right. Here. Don’t interfere.”
He subsided. It was enough. Moving back several meters, she reached into the timeplains. The fog was still there, still cloaking the way out, but this one vision she had pre-explored, and knew exactly where to find again. As before, she tapped into the waters. Prepared herself with two deep breaths. Rock in hand, she drew in a third and sprinted back toward the Lieutenant. Back toward the force field zapping and fritzing between the rows of pylons standing twelve meters high. Pain didn’t matter, only the rock in her hand and the timing of her cast.
Arm circling hard and fast, she whipped her weapon back around and up. The fast-flung, underhand cast soared up high, clearing the half-seen, static-sparked top of the fence. Those static sparks illuminated the muddy, pale stone briefly, still rising as it vanished from view.
Ferrar opened his mouth to speak. Ia held up her palm, keeping him silent. Waiting, and listening. Mere seconds later, something gronked in the distance. It squealed and broke into a gallop that shook the ground, even from this far away. Several others honked and hooted in reply, and the gallop became a rumble of not-weather thunder.
Ferrar drew in another breath. Ia shushed him, palm still raised. She counted slowly, silently, to fifteen—and they both flinched as the retreating herd ran into yet more life-forms, ones which skreeled and gronked, growled and hissed, clashing in thudding blows that trembled through the ground and the air alike. Spotlights from the Marines on patrol lit up the woods beyond the perimeter fence, though no weapons fire was heard. Whatever battle was taking place out there, the soldiers on patrol were apparently going to let happen without them.
Pleased, Ia allowed herself a grin. Facing her superior, she gave him a slight bow. “As you can see, I know what I’m doing.”
“See what?” Ferrar demanded, hissing the words at her. “What the hell did you just do, out there?”
“If you hadn’t chosen to follow me, sir . . . no one would know what I just did.” Closing the distance between them, she lowered her voice, mindful that the carnage in the distance could very well wake up some of the civilians sleeping around them. “Alone in the dark, with no one to witness, and no one to ever know about it . . . save for you and I. As for what I have done, I have just saved approximately sixty to seventy civilian lives, and another ten to twelve soldiers, if not more.”
“How?” he challenged her, lowering his voice to match hers. His finger poked her in the chest, thankfully on the side opposite her battered ribs. “ And don’t give me any shakk that I don’t have a right to know!”
“B Squad’s the one patrolling on the west side tonight,” Ia started to say, only to be interrupted.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he shot back, impatient.
“I’m trying, sir,” she retorted dryly. “Fifteen or twenty minutes ago, they let a small herd of about fourteen sukers graze a little too close to the perimeter. Sukers get scared off by a little light and noise, so they probably thought a single Marine could shoo them away if they came any closer. What they didn’t realize was that, with the prevailing wind coming from the east, a sextet of grampass had slunk up the side of the hill, and were tracking their favorite, house-sized prey.
“That rock I flung?” Ia offered. “I aimed it—and timed it— to hit the love-nodes of the lead bull suker, specifically when he was facing away from the camp. Those grampass were approaching from the far side of that herd. If I hadn’t scared the lead bull and stampeded the rest into running with him, running in the direction he was facing, away from this camp . . . the grampass would have come up on their far side from us, and they would have bolted this way. Away from their main predators.
“Now. You tell me, sir. Do you really think that force field would’ve been able to withstand fourteen frightened sukers stampeding this way? Let alone a single Marine with a handlight?” Ia asked. She didn’t have to see his wince to know it was a rhetorical question. Sukers were larger than the hovervans Estes and the others had driven, earlier. So were their chief predators. Still, she drove the point home. “The sukers would have broken through the force fields and tramped through all of these tents. The grampass would have followed . . . and it would have been a slaughter of us instead of the sukers.”
She pointed in the direction of the noises still echoing up through the woods, the combat still going on between the ramhorned herbivores and their long-necked, sharp-toothed foes.
“This is what I do. Not for glittery, and not for glory. If we had just talked about the mayor’s ceremony tomorrow, if you hadn’t grabbed my writer from me . . . that would have been fine. You would have gone on your way, I would have come out here, thrown my little rock, and gone back to bed with no one the wiser. If you hadn’t stayed where I asked, if you had interfered . . . the suker bull would have continued to turn, ruining my one shot. Maybe I would’ve cast my stone well enough to get him to run sideways . . . but the six grampass tracking the herd would have come close enough to see the Marines out there, and smell the civilians in here, and maybe brought them our way anyway . . . and the force field still might have fallen, leading to an unnecessary loss of lives.”
“Unnecessary?” Ferrar repeated. “But what if they were necessary? You said it yourself: Vladistad is what led to the United Earth reformation movement. Which led us to this moment.”
“Are you willing to take that risk?” Ia countered, pointing at the now quiet forest. “I could show you what the future would be like if you interfered, sir, but you couldn’t even see the bull-suker, right here, right now, hidden in the local equivalent of trees. Yet I still hit him, and I stampeded the herd away from this camp. You can go out and look for yourself in the morning. This drizzle will stop in about two more minutes, so the tracks and the carnage will still be there. Think whatever you like, but don’t you dare do anything about what you saw and heard tonight until you go out there and have taken a good, long look at everything. Anything else I tried to show you, you wouldn’t be able to see . . . so there’s no point in my trying.”
Ferrar snorted. “That’s presuming you can see as much as Giorgi ever did.”
Ia spread her hands, feeling the drizzle tapering down to a mist. “Giorgi was standing in the middle of a forest on a dark, stormy night, sir. By comparison, I stand on a wide-open plain at high noon, under a cloudless sky lit by a binary star system.”
He started to argue the point, but the comm on his arm unit squawked. Lifting his forearm, Ferrar activated the link. “Ferrar. Go.”
Ia listened as Sergeant Pleistoch’s voice came through the unit’s speakers. “Sir, this is Sgt. Pleistoch. We just had a pack of sukers stampede straight into a clutch of grampass. If they hadn’t run that way . . . I think they might’ve been scared this way, sir. As it is, most of the dinoids ran off to continue fighting elsewhere, thank God, but we have a lot of blood on the ground. Requesting permission to torch the scent from the zone so it doesn’t draw in any more predators, sir.”
Ferrar studied Ia for a long moment, then spoke. “Permission granted, Sergeant. Everything else is too wet to burn out of control. And keep the local fauna further out from camp from now on, Sergeant.”
“Understood, sir. Pleistoch out.”
“Ferrar out.” Shutting off the link, he lowered his arm, still staring at her.
Ia, uncertain and uncomfortable from the mist sti
ll obscuring the way out of this moment, squared her shoulders and stared back.
“What am I going to do with you, Corporal?” he finally asked.
“Sir?” she queried, unsure of his meaning.
“You are one of the best damned soldiers I have ever seen. If you aren’t shakking me, if those . . . specifics you wrote down,” he added, lifting his chin at the rectangular bulk of the writing pad sheltering under her rain slicker, “are in any way accurate . . . what the hell am I supposed to do with you?”
That was a good question. Drawing in a deep breath, Ia let it out slowly. “Well . . . if you ask me if I can do something, and I say yes, then it’ll get done, sir. You have my word on that. If you ask me and I say no, then it cannot be done . . . whether or not it technically could be done.”
“Is that so?” Ferrar challenged quietly.
Ia looked down at her muddied palm, then back up at his face. “I have exactly one rock to throw, sir. I’m aiming it at a suker bull located three hundred years from now. Between then and now, I have a hell of a lot more lives to worry about than a couple hundred civilians . . . or even a couple million. If I told you, if I showed you what I am trying to do . . . well, you’re a very strong-willed man. You’d be tempted far too much into trying to take matters into your own hands. You’d be trying to fire a Heck at the enemy, only you’re blindfolded with your ears plugged, compared to me, and the enemy is holding far too many lives hostage. The damage would be too great.
“I can only tell you this: if it can be done, sir, I will do it. You have my prophetic stamp on that. . . .and you don’t need to know anything more than that. I wish I could tell you more,” Ia murmured. “But I cannot and will not take that risk. I’m the only one who can throw this rock, the only one who knows what to do. And how. And when.”
He drew in a breath to speak, then paused and looked up, lifting one of his own hands for a long moment. “The rain has stopped. Like you said it would.”
Ia didn’t bother to look up. She was more grateful for the view down, and in. Whatever he was now thinking, whatever she had said to convince him . . . the mist had lifted from the timestreams.
So instead, she quipped lightly, “We’ll have mostly clear skies with a few scudding clouds by ten hundred hours local, sir. Bright clear skies by midafternoon, and temperatures rising into the mid-twenties. Humidity will be around ninety-five percent, though . . . but this region will have no more rain for the next five days, and only scattered light rains after that for the following three weeks.”
He looked at her sharply. She gave him a lopsided smile.
“You’ll note that I didn’t have to tell you the weather report, sir. But there was also no reason not to tell you.” She gestured with her clean hand off to the left, back in the direction she had come from. “Mind if I request permission to go back to bed, sir? My ribs are still hurting a little, and I’m tired from all the hard work I did today. At least now I know I can sleep in peace. Now that my work is done for the day.”
He looked down at his arm unit, out across the now quiescent force fields, then back at her. Slowly, he nodded. “Permission granted. For now. But if I ask you to do something . . .”
“If I can do it, it’ll get done, sir. The rest . . . you don’t need to know.” Dipping her head in politeness, she turned to walk away.
“You do realize there’s still the little matter of your insubordination to a superior officer,” he called after her, pitching his voice a little louder. “You don’t give the orders in my Company.”
Ia spun on her heel, giving him another wry smile as she backed up the muddy, makeshift lane. “In this one matter, Lieutenant . . . legally, I outrank you. In all other matters, you are my superior, and I will do my absolute best to follow any orders you give me. You have my promise on that, too. I never give less than my best, sir.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Ferrar warned her. He looked up at the cloud-strewn sky and sighed. “Fine. We have four more days of flood cleanup to wade through before Platform Hum-Vee brings in the Army to relieve us. I’m not going to put your insubordination down on your record . . . but I’m not going to let it slide, either. You’re going to get stuck with the dirtiest, nastiest jobs you can manage with those cracked ribs of yours until we head back up into space, soldier. Unless you’re going to try and claim that there’s some special psychic voodoo out there that says otherwise?”
“Sir, no, sir. That was the last time-sensitive task on this planet, sir,” Ia admitted freely, nodding at the fence in the distance. “The only hell you’ll catch is from the medical team if you overwork me, sir. In the meantime, you should probably get some sleep, Lieutenant,” she added. “As you said, we have four more days of cleanup ahead of us.”
“Get some sleep yourself, Corporal,” Ferrar told her. “You’ll need it.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 16
I earned the trust of my commanding officers the same way as anyone else. By earning it with steadfast service, accuracy, efficiency, and not giving up when I believed we could win a particular fight. I’m no psychodominant. If I were . . . my life would’ve been slightly easier. I could’ve imposed my will on everyone around me . . . but I’m not.
I won their trust with logic and tangible results. No trickery, no sleight of hand. And I tried my very best not to lie while doing so. That’s one of the Fatalities, you know.
~Ia
FEBRUARY 15, 2491 T.S.
RESEARCH DOME THREE, OBERON MINING & REFINERY
CONSORTIUM
OBERON’S ROCK, GS 138 SYSTEM
Even knowing her mechsuit was fully sealed against the external environment, Ia’s lungs still ached with the need to cough. Dust and debris choked the air, pounding with each bright yellow orange flash from the industrial lasers searing through the air. Her coolant system dealt well enough with the heat of supercharged particles slamming over and over into the metallic ores which comprised most of the chunk of planetoid they were on, but she knew that relief wouldn’t last.
None of the members of 2nd Platoon dared to poke a weapon around the corner, not even to take a wild potshot at the laser pods. The pirates who had seized this research facility had rigged them to fire at anything metallic, and at anything containing ceristeel. Which included their mechsuits and weapons. Estes had already lost her Heck in the experiment of trying to take out those makeshift guns, the barrel melted into brittle slag.
Each rapid-fire zwwowwp was followed by a pattering shower of increasingly pulverized debris. Even with her external pickups muted, the sound was a nonstop pressure. A glance to her left showed D’kora gesturing in her own half-mech armor, though her argument with whomever wasn’t being broadcast to the rest. Ia could guess, though. She waited patiently for the discussion to conclude, and through the several seconds that followed.
“Ferrar to Corporal Ia.”
The broadcast came on a private channel, just the two of them. Ia didn’t move. “Ia here. What can I do for you, sir?”
“Well, now, isn’t that the question? You once swore to me, if I asked you if something could be done, you’d tell me whether or not it could be done. So. I am asking you, Corporal . . . can you get the 2nd Platoon through that stalemate? We’re taking heavy casualties on the front and side doors. We need that back entrance busted open. Without blowing up the dome and venting everyone to space. So, I am asking you . . . can you get that back door open, Corporal?”
“Sir, yes, sir. I can get it open. It won’t be quick, though. And I’ll have to do some scouting farther up, to make sure the rest of the way is clear. I’m not taking the 2nd into any deathtraps.”
“Your concern is appreciated, Corporal.”
She smiled wryly. “Thank you, sir. Please explain to Lt. D’kora that I have an idea, and that you’ve authorized me to implement it. Stress that no one else is to follow unless and until the lasers stop. We don’t dare risk any other lives.”
“Tell me something I don
’t know.”
“You’re an uncle.”
“I said something I didn’t know. Ferrar out.”
Ia smirked. An uncle . . . again, she thought. She didn’t try contacting him a second time, though. Half a minute later, D’kora contacted her.
“The Lieutenant says you had an idea, Corporal. You didn’t bring it to me,” her platoon officer stated bluntly, darkly.
“I figured that, given the risk, you’d say no, sir . . . but we need this stalemate broken. I think I know how. If I’m right,” she argued, “we can crack open the back door and ride to the rescue. If I’m wrong . . . I’ll be the only casualty, and the rest of you can go join the others. Now, I’m willing to take that risk, sir. I know what I face if I’m wrong, and what’s at stake if I’m right.”
“Permission granted. Tell me what you need.”
Ia moved away from where she crouched by the tunnel wall. She worked her way back down the line, and tapped Buck Sergeant Jung Baker, the new sergeant of A Squad, on his ceristeel-plated, gun-toting arm, switching to external speakers as well as her comm. “Sergeant!” she projected through the noise of the laser drills. “I need your medic kit!”
“What, are you injured?” he shot back, though he did swing open the compartment on his full-mech thigh, revealing the gear packed inside. Some of the gear was designed to be used by servo fingers, but for this, she needed greater dexterity.
Blink-coding the shutdown sequence for her armor, Ia opened the lower panels, freeing first her p-suited feet, then her hands. Straining, she reached for the goods in the sergeant’s thigh compartment. He shifted a little closer, lifting one leg on servos that whined faintly compared to the thundering of the makeshift cannons up ahead. Digging through the supplies, she fished out a pair of dust masks and a roll of paper tape. Ripping the metal strips off the nose sections, she balanced the masks on his leg, and quickly unsealed the o-ring of her p-suit from her mechsuit helmet.
