by Ben Weaver
“You think I’ll be a good leader?”
“You’re from Aire-Wu.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The narrative in your folder says that four generations of your family have worked in the timber industry there. Butanee was it?”
“Yeah, but lumberjacks don’t make for good leaders. Trust me. We’re all bush people, like to be alone, and we do not want anyone micromanaging us.”
“I grew up in a mine. We traded in ore. Miners and lumberjacks are cut from the same cloth. And you’d be surprised how well we adapt to leading and being led.”
“I would be. Because right now I feel pretty lost. I mean, everyone knows Cavalier was taking something. How am I supposed to get my people past that? What if Cavalier wasn’t the only junkie? What then?”
“You’ll deal with it. We both will.”
“How can you be so confident?”
“Because this is my company. And no one, I mean no one, is going to let me down. If it makes you feel better, just keep telling yourself you are ready. It’s a pretty good lie. It works for me. Most of the time.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“And Canada? One last bit of advice. I’m sharing all my fears and doubts with you, and to be honest, that’s not the way to play it with your people. If they see you’re afraid, if they see you’re indecisive, they will not follow. Everybody hates Disque. But most of us would follow him to our deaths. I’m not saying you have to be a prick. Just calm. Always assessing the situation and reacting like that.” I snapped my fingers. She nodded.
We walked a few more moments in silence, me thinking about the fact that she came from Aire-Wu and remembering that the second conditioning facility was supposedly there. Eventually I asked, “Sergeant, in all the time you were home before you got drafted, and believe me, I know Aire-Wu’s a big planet, but just out of curiosity, did you ever see any military presence there that seemed, I don’t know, unusual?”
I paused to read her expression, and, strangely enough, she looked a little nervous. “What do you mean? The Seventeen’s always had a base in Butanee.”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
“Wait. So everybody thinks the Racinians terraformed my world, and there are always research projects going on to learn the truth. We even had guys digging in the middle of one of our tree farms, not too far from a few of the mills. I remember those lab coat guys were escorted by military people. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Maybe. Did they ever find anything?”
“I don’t know. If they did, they never told us about it. They paid my dad a lot for the okay to dig, though. Stayed there a few months, filled in the holes, and pulled out. Why do you ask?”
“Just following up on something. Thanks.”
“And thank you, sir. I mean for the advice.”
“Anytime.”
“Oh, I almost forgot to ask. Any word about the XO?”
I shook my head.
“It’s like someone just plucked him off the battlefield.”
My voice grew thin. “Yeah, it is.”
We neared the tarmac, and abruptly the solitude of the path and stillness of the morning yielded sharply to the whine of warming turbines, the faint howl of the wind sweeping down from the mesas, and the hollering of squad corporals. About fifty yards ahead, Javelin, Thomason, and Kohrana loaded backpacks into the cargo hold of a G21 Endosector Armored Troop Carrier, one of two quad-winged birds of prey that would carry our three squads to the caves. Since it was a special operation, officers were supposed to pitch in as much as the grunts, and I was glad to see my command team pulling their weight. I had figured that Javelin and Kohrana would dole out the grunt work to, well, the grunts. Still, they had not taken the entire burden of loading upon themselves. A half dozen privates stocked the other ATC while the rest shifted in single file into the hold.
“Captain,” Kohrana said, looking up from an underwing cargo bay and backhanding sweat from his brow. “Thanks for dropping by.”
“Is our gear stowed, XO?” I asked, all business and denying him a reaction to his remark.
“Yes, sir. The gear is stowed. Almost finished boarding.”
“Very well. Alert the pilots. Dust off at their discretion.”
Canada and I left him and headed up the gangway, into the hold. I took a jumpseat between her and Javelin. Opposite us sat privates zippered into black combat utilities that hardened the appearance of even the prettiest young women. A shudder broke through me as, for a moment, I spotted a grunt who looked a little like Dina. I closed my eyes.
“Sir, all present and accounted for,” said Kohrana. I jolted as he took a seat opposite me and lowered the big safety bars over his shoulders. He clipped the stock of his QQ90 particle rifle into the deck mount between his legs. “Dust off in thirty seconds,” he reported.
The turbines cycled up, and all that raw power rumbled through the hold for a full half minute until we rose in a vertical takeoff. I switched on my tac and let Disque know that we were en route and would issue status reports as necessary. He gave me the unwelcome news that several Western Alliance capital ships had just tawted into orbit and were squaring off with our fleet. His advice was as crude as it was curt: “Haul major fucking ass. Read me, Captain?”
“Loud and clear, sir!”
The first Racinian ruins on Exeter had been discovered inside the Minsalo Caves, and I knew more about them than most of my colleagues. My dad was a geologist, and maybe it was in my genes, but most of my life I’ve had a special interest in rock formations, sedimentary layers, and, well, dirt. Not the most interesting stuff, but I like the idea that rocks are like history books, though their stories rarely lie and are not influenced by personal agendas. There may not be any more pure form of history.
The caves’ colossal entrance hung on a cliff wall nearly six hundred meters above Virginis Canyon’s dry riverbed. The first time I had come to the place, we had been forced to rappel down the cliff, then pendulum ourselves inside the cave. Our entry via the ATCs would be far less dangerous and dramatic. I watched from a small window as the first ship hovered near that great open mouth of stone, turned tail, and backed up toward the cave. The gangway came down, and even as it made contact with the cave floor, my guardsmen flooded out, their skins set to a fluctuating camouflage of red, brown, and alabaster-white that mirrored the colors of the cave walls. I skinned up myself, called on my HUV, and watched a digitized image of them dispersing.
“Captain, First and Second Squads are in,” reported Squad Sergeant Hurley, one of Kohrana’s people from Yankee Company.
“Copy that, Sergeant. Establish your perimeter points down to the Great Hall. Copy?”
“Copy, sir.”
“You meet any resistance, you take them out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, Captain, rumor has it you’ve been here before,” said Kohrana, as the ATC banked hard, then began lining up its tail with the entrance.
“That’s no rumor. And here’s a tip: most of this place isn’t on the map. Somebody gets lost, all that rock could interfere with GPS signals and transponders. So let’s keep everyone buddied up and tight.”
“Does it ever bother you?” he asked suddenly, fingering his own cheek and staring at the birthmark on mine. “I mean, does it itch or anything?”
Before I could answer, the hold’s gangway began yawning open, and our safety bars automatically whined up and away.
“All right,” cried Mazamo, a stocky blond woman and Third Squad’s sergeant. “Ready on the line. By the numbers. Just like the drill.”
The troops formed a neat line, with the first poised at the red mark near the gangway’s edge.
At that moment, I couldn’t help but launch into one of Sergeant Pope’s old morale boosters. “Squad, are you ready?”
“Yes, sir!” they boomed.
“Very well. Go! Go! Go!”
One after another they jogged down the ramp, leapt onto
the cave’s dusty stone floor, and fanned out. I unclipped my own particle rifle from the floor and fell in behind Javelin, Thomason, Canada, and Kohrana.
We were in the cave no more than a few seconds when the echo of particle fire sounded ahead, from where the entrance funneled down into a narrow gallery. I darted to a wall, hunkered down, and read the screens in my HUV. “Hurley? Report?”
“Snipers. Hit-and-run. Think we wounded one of them, but we got one dead, two wounded ourselves.”
“Get them up here.” I looked to Kohrana. “Medevac.”
He nodded and made the call while I studied a 3-D map of the entrance. As expected, those Alliance snipers were jamming my HUV and effectively concealing themselves from detection. The fact they had detected us meant that they had either made visual contact, or someone had given them our encryption codes so they could detect our communications or tac signals. Whatever the case, we had lost the element of surprise, and they might even be tracking us.
“Medevac’s en route, but are you sure you don’t want to leave them?” asked Kohrana. “Let the magic caves do their work?”
I matched his cynical grin with one of my own. “No.”
“Got another question. If the caves heal people, then every time we shoot the enemy, he lies down and gets healed. Then he’s ready for more. So we can’t kill him.”
“And maybe he can’t kill us.”
“This is nuts.”
I chuckled under my breath. “Now you’re making sense.”
“What if we dismember them? You think the caves can put bodies back together?”
“Forget that. Let’s establish where we are: they’re expecting us and regrouping, trying to reinforce their positions, which is why we’re going in now, full force.”
“You’re insane. We’ll draw too much fire.”
“Hey, man. When they’re shooting at you, they’re telling you where they are.”
“Screw that. We have to—”
“First, Second, Third Squads?” I called, getting quickly to my feet. “Hard and fast. Flush them out. Let’s go!” I took off toward the gallery, leaving a stunned Kohrana in my wake.
“You can’t do this,” he cried.
“I know,” I called back. “I’m insane. Follow me!” Though I never glanced back, I suspected the color had faded from his cheeks.
4
I raced by one of the markers left several decades prior by a speleological team. The little hemisphere had been flashing all that time, marking the path. The tunnel grew more narrow, a lot more damp, then, as I remembered, it sloped down in a thirty-five-degree grade, with the ceiling just a meter above my head. More gunfire punctuated the whistling wind and quickened my pace.
“Captain?” gasped Kohrana, trying to keep up with me. “You’re taking us right into those snipers!”
“Like you said, they’ll all just get shot and healed. Either way, we got no time for cat and mouse. There’s an Alliance fleet in orbit. We have to flush out these Marines and get the hell out of here.” There was another thing I wanted to do, but he didn’t need to know about that.
“If the Alliance is going to win back this moon, then who cares if we do this?” asked Thomason, who had obviously been monitoring my command channel. “We’ve already lost.”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen up there, so we do our jobs. And we do them quickly. Canada, you copy?”
“Yes, sir! Just hitting the Great Hall now. Jesus, this place is big. Lots of stalagmites for them to set up sniper nests.”
“Move in, three by three. Close proximity. Tight to the wall. Listen to Hurley. He knows what he’s doing. And set your particle range for two meters, nearly point-blank. You’re going to have ricocheting like you wouldn’t believe if you open up.”
“Copy that, sir. Seen some already. Moving out.”
“Javelin? You with me?” I called, waited, was about to call again when:
“I’m here, Captain. There’s another tunnel about ten meters ahead, right near the entrance to the hall. Heads off to the right. Can’t bring it up on the map, but I want to take Second Squad in there.”
“Do it.”
“Sir, are you sure, sir?”
“What do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“I mean, sir, this is my idea. You’re going along?”
I regret what I said next. It was unprofessional, but it just came out. “Javelin, do not fuck with me. Get in there and kill anything that moves. Copy?”
“Uh, copy, sir.”
Kohrana cleared the skin near his face to reveal his frown. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. You people piss me off, you know that? Just hold your position.”
And the fool in me took over once more. I brought my rifle to bear, scaled the wall, then, hanging inverted from the ceiling but feeling not a single graviton’s pull, I bolted off for the Great Hall, negotiating around stalactites, which, from my point of view, rose from the floor.
I sprinted into the vast chamber of the Great Hall, glanced down at First Squad as they spread out, dashing from stalagmite to stalagmite, working themselves deeper into the gloomy orifice.
Then, gunfire erupted from at least a dozen points ahead. My tactical computer immediately traced the beads and singled out fourteen Western Alliance Marines who had taken up positions at the far end of the hall.
Three of Hurley’s people took left flank, and another three took right. Good plan. They’d drive those snipers away from the main exit and toward a far corner. I opted to take out the four Marines in the middle, and I’d do that quietly, before they knew what had hit them.
The first Marine who had been firing then ducking back behind a narrow stalagmite glanced up at the rush of wind behind him. Exploiting the bond to penetrate his combat skin, I drove the butt of my rifle into his face as I dropped on him. We collapsed and still disoriented but gripping his weapon, he rolled away.
But I had already abandoned my weapon and had the blade of my Ka-Bar sticking from the bottom of my fist. He got a nanosecond look at me before I punched the blade into his heart, withdrew it, and, panting, snatched up my gun and dodged to a glossy stalagmite a few meters to my right.
Listening only to the sound of my breathing and trying to ignore the voice in my head that whispered, “Murderer…murderer…” I reached the stalagmite, paused, then spotted movement just ahead, near the next pillar of stone.
“Sir! We’re taking heavy fire in here,” cried Javelin over the channel. “Request permission to A-3 them, copy?”
“Negative.” Javelin wanted to use acipalm-three grenades, which would spread their incendiary black goo all over the cave after exploding, killing the Marines in there by working at the subatomic level to rob the gluons from their bodies. Problem was, that same theft would also destroy a portion of the cave. Our orders dictated that we preserve as much of the rock formations and alien ruins as possible.
“Sir, I’ve already lost three people!” Javelin argued.
“Then fall back!”
Silence. Then, finally, “Aye-aye, sir! Wait a minute…”
“What is it, Javelin?”
“Sir? They’ve ceased fire. They’re falling back.”
“Pursue!”
“Aye-aye, sir!”
I took off running for that next pillar, got there, found nothing. “Canada?”
“Copy, sir. Got seven Marine casualties so far. Rest here are falling back.”
“Very well. Let’s go get them.”
The next tunnel, a ragged triangle just two meters wide near the base and about three meters high, led to an abandoned Racinian hangar, a vast, empty chamber with stone walls blending seamlessly into polished metal. I met up with Kohrana near the tunnel’s entrance, and he hesitated before going inside.
“Something you want to say, Captain?” I asked.
His eyes grew narrower, more menacing. “No.” He hustled by and jogged off into the gloom.
We crossed the hangar without incident, reac
hed the conduit of stone on the other side, then ducked down and shifted at double time inside. All three of our squads lay ahead, and reports from Javelin, Canada, and Thomason came in, along with further observations from the squad sergeants. After about ten minutes of hunchbacked travel, we reached a familiar cavity about five hundred meters across and ringed by a natural catwalk. The moment I caught sight of the place, I remembered the woman we had chased there, back when I had been a cadet:
Her eyes widened, the irises a weird, deep shade of red, her head haloed by that mop of coarse white hair. She shifted her gaze a little, inspected us, then spoke in a rapid fire that we could barely follow. “Toroidal Curvature of the containment field allows the formation of the mediators and the establishment of a stable family of Primal Space Time Matter particles. The main TAWT drive computers, networked in a Quantum Communication Array allow the so-called faster-than-light computations to be made, which in turn collapse the wave function of any and all present conditions. As the ship’s computer observes the conditions, it in effect can answer questions before they are posed.”
Jarrett frowned at me.
“Why is she reciting a page from colonial history?” asked Dina.
“And why is she wearing our utilities?” Clarion added. “Unless—”
“You’re not them?” the woman cried, then grabbed Jarrett’s wrist with a bony hand. “You haven’t come to take me back?”
Jarrett tugged himself free. “Take you back where?”
“Better yet, who’re you talking about?” I asked.
“Twenty-two-sixty-six. Mining of bauxite begins on fifth planet in Ross Two-forty-eight solar system,” the woman replied, her ruby eyes going vacant. “Inte-Micro Corporation CEO Tamer Yatanaya names planet Allah-Trope and declares it retreat for Muslims persecuted by Eastern Alliance powers. Allah-Trope becomes first off-world colony with predominately one religion. By year’s end, floating research operations are dropped onto planet Epsilon Eri Three—a world entirely covered by warm oceans whose salt content is only slightly higher than Terra’s. Thousands of new microorganisms discovered. Aquacultural experiments yield new food sources for a human population that now numbers twenty billion, with six billion living in Sol system colonies and nearly five billion in extrasolar settlements.”
