Backshot

by David Sherman

Gunny Lytle looked bemused. “You know, sir, every time I try to teach him something, he already knows it. I don’t know about platoon commander, but with a little seasoning, he could take on my job without missing a beat.” He glanced at Suptra and added, “Sorry. I don’t mean to imply that you couldn’t do just as well.”

  “Anyone else?” Obannion asked, though Suptra was the only one who hadn’t yet offered an opinion. The section leader shrugged. “I wouldn’t have any problem following him.” He gave a wry smile.

  “Provided we had a tour between me being his boss and him being mine.”

  “Let’s see how he handles his little bit of ‘diplomacy,’ then readdress the question,” Obannion said. He turned to the waiting work on his desk and the others filed out. Aboard Confederation Navy Starship City of Dundee Three days later, second platoon’s first squad boarded a navy Essay ferrying cargo to the landing ship, freight, CNSS City of Dundee . A petty officer third met them at the docking bay, clipped them onto a guideline, and towed them through the weightlessness of a navy starship in orbit to the cabin that would be their quarters for the duration of their voyage to Silvasia. When they reached the cabin the third class slapped a diagram on the bulkhead just inside the hatch and said, “This schematic shows you where the galley, the gym, and the library are. You read it—”

  “Thanks, petty officer,” Daly interrupted him. “I’ve sailed on Homdale class ships before, I know how to find my way around. Is our use schedule posted there?” He nodded at a blank screen next to the schematic.

  “Whatever you say, Sergeant,” the third class said in a tone that made clear he meant anything but. “You know how to access it?”

  Daly kicked into a gentle cross-cabin movement in the starship’s orbital null-G and stopped himself with one hand next to the control panel alongside the screen. He touched the controls and the panel sprang to life, displaying the Force Recon squad’s schedule for using the troop mess, crew’s gym, and ship’s library.

  “If the jacks work, we won’t need to visit the library unless we want the exercise of getting there and back,” he said.

  “I guess you know where the jacks are?”

  “Wazzen, show the man.”

  Lance Corporal Wazzen, the squad’s most junior man, grinned crookedly and reached over one of the wall-mounted bunks. He slid a small panel to the side, exposing the plug-in jacks for the ship’s library.

  “Anything else we need to know?” Daly asked. The third class slowly shook his head. “Looks like you’ve got everything under control. Unless you need to know when we break orbit.”

  Daly tapped his wrist comp and looked at its display. “Scheduled for twelve hours, seventeen minutes standard from now,” he said. “And the most junior of us has made more than a dozen jumps, so we all know that routine, too.”

  “Happy sailing, then,” the third class said, backing out of the cabin. He closed the hatch, but not quickly enough to keep the Marines from seeing the disgusted expression that washed over his face—he’d been looking forward to making the Marines feel dumb by showing them things they didn’t know about. The Marines laughed at the closed hatch.

  “Ah, sailors,” chortled Sergeant Kindy, the assistant squad leader. “I guess they don’t teach them anymore that one of the major functions of early Marines was keeping sailors in line aboard ship.”

  “That meant we had to know our way around their ships better than they did,” added the senior reconman, Corporal Nomonon.

  “They probably do remember,” said Lance Corporal Wazzen, “and that’s why they keep trying to make us look dumb.”

  The trip to Silvasia was uneventful. The four Marines spent several hours a day in the crew’s gym, working out to maintain their physical edge. When they weren’t otherwise occupied, they were plugged into the ship’s library, refreshing their knowledge of the various Silvasian wars, learning everything they could about the current peacekeeping operation, the history of the 104th Mobile Infantry Division, and reading the bios and records of Major General Fitzter and Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys—Daly and his men wanted to hit the ground running, and they wanted to make an immediate and lasting impression on the army officers for whom they’d be working.

  Receiving Barracks, Confederation Navy Base (Planetside), Silvasia

  “So how are we going to convince that doggie light colonel?” Corporal Nomonon asked.

  “We aren’t, I am,” Sergeant Daly replied. A wolfish smile flickered across his face as he looked at his men. “You know what a midnight requisition is. So does the army. But the army doesn’t have a clue how we do it. I’m going to show him.”

  “Shit,” Lance Corporal Wazzen muttered. “You do that once the army knows how we do it; how are we going to get any supplies we need that Mother Corps didn’t have to give to us?”

  Daly laughed. “Come on, he’s a doggie, he’s probably not smart enough to make the connection between what I show him and our midnight requisitions.”

  Sergeant Kindy shook his head. “One of these days, boss, you’re going to say something like that where some doggie brass will overhear you. Then your sweet ass will be grass.”

  Corporal Nomonon poked him on the shoulder. “How do you know his ass is sweet, you two been doing something Mother Corps might object to?”

  Kindy blushed and jabbed Nomonon back. “Shut your face. I’d go for Bella Dwan before I did that.”

  Nomonon shook his head. “Man, you must have one powerful death wish.” He turned to Daly. “Boss, do we gotta take him on this op? He wants to go for Bella, he could blow the whole op and get us all killed.”

  Daly looked at the two as though he was considering whether or not to take Kindy along. Then he said,

  “Tell you what. Instead of me doing it by myself, we’ll all show Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys that we have capabilities his troops don’t.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Headquarters, 104th Mobile Infantry Division, Confederation Army, Silvasian Peacekeeping Mission

  The corner of Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys’s mouth twitched in annoyance when an unexpected waft of air stirred a strand of hair that had dropped onto his forehead. He looked up, ready to snap at whoever opened his office door without knocking, but bit off what he’d been about to say when nobody was there and the door was closed.

  He returned to the intel analysis he’d been studying. The enemy HQ had moved again, but not before killing the six-man recon team that had found it and reported its position. In order to preserve his remaining reconmen, he was teaming them up, one reconman with five legs—regular infantry—for the search and locate missions. The success rate of the combined patrols in finding the enemy headquarters was nearly as good as the success rate of the pure recon patrols. Their failure rate in fixing the enemy’s location until a reaction team could reach them was just as abysmal. He looked up faster at another vagrant air movement. Again, nobody was there—but had he seen his door easing closed the last centimeter?

  Moving only his eyes, he examined his office, looking into each shadow, at the sides of everything someone might conceivably be behind. He saw no one, nothing out of place. He gave his head a sharp shake. This mission must be getting to him. He’d never before been on an operation where a division’s reconnaissance battalion failed so consistently in its primary mission, or suffered so many casualties. If only, if only—

  Maybe General Fitzter was right, maybe when those Force Recon Marines showed up and got killed it would change their luck. But where were the Marines? Their ship was in orbit, they should have reported in by now.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded out loud as air brushed across his brow again. Had the door frame come loose, was there some loose paneling around it?

  He got up from his desk, stomped to the door, and rattled it. It felt as solidly secure as ever. He opened the door and looked into the outer office. His analysts and communications people were all at their stations. He strode beyond them to the open outer door and stepped int
o the corridor. Nobody was in sight in either direction, so unless someone had cracked his door open and shut, then immediately jumped back to his station, nobody was playing a bad joke on him. He looked at the assistant G2, who seemed too preoccupied with what she was doing to notice if somebody had. He shook his head. It was the operation, it had to be. He stepped back into his office and eased the door closed, then jumped as a voice behind him, from near his desk, said, “Sir, Sergeant Daly, Fourth Force Reconnaissance Company, reporting as ordered.”

  Kevelys spun about and croaked out something incoherent. A disembodied head floated in the air in front of his desk. His eyes shot left and right. Another disembodied head floated in midair to his right, two more were suspended to his left.

  Kevelys worked his mouth to make enough saliva to swallow, then shouted, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Then added in a rising voice, “And how the hell did you get in here?”

  “I believe you were expecting us, sir,” Daly said blandly. “And if nobody on your staff told you our ship is in orbit, somebody needs some straightening out.” His head moved in a way that made Kevelys think he must have shrugged. “Sir, my commander informed me you have never worked with Force Recon before, so I decided to give you a small demonstration of our capabilities. By way of introduction, sir.”

  Kevelys had recovered his poise while Daly talked, and now drew himself to his most commanding posture. “Someone’s head is going to roll!” he snapped. “I should have been informed the moment you entered the base.”

  “Sorry, sir. Nobody knew we were here until I reported to you.”

  Kevelys looked at him in utter disbelief. “Are you trying to insinuate that you simply waltzed into a secure army installation and nobody saw or challenged you?”

  “Nossir, I’m not insinuating that; I’m stating it as a fact. Sir, Force Recon can go into—and safely return from—places nobody else can enter.”

  Kevelys would have sagged into his chair if he’d been standing behind his desk. But he wasn’t, he was standing midway between his desk and the door.

  “Out of my way,” he snarled, and staggered around his desk to sit heavily. He looked hard at the Marines, but this time he didn’t look at their disembodied heads, he looked at the apparently empty air below their heads. “I thought—” he paused to swallow. “I thought Marine chameleons were somehow visible. I mean if you look right at them and you know a Marine is there you can see him.”

  “Yessir, that’s true of the standard Marine chameleon uniform. But Force Recon has greater need for invisibility, so our chameleons are more effective. We also know how to move very, very quietly.” His head vanished as he donned his helmet.

  “Take that helmet off!” Kevelys commanded. “I can’t see you.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Kevelys spun to his left. Just a moment ago, Daly had been to his right front. Now the Marine stood a pace away from his left shoulder.

  “Nobody can move that far, that fast, without making noise!”

  Daly’s shrug went again unseen. “As I said, sir, we can move very quietly.”

  “This base has infrared sensors around the perimeter,” Kevelys said, grasping at straws. “You couldn’t have gotten past them without being spotted.” He jumped as something unseen landed on his hands.

  “That’s my helmet, sir,” Daly told him. “The infrared screen is in place. If the colonel would be so good as to put it on, he can see for himself.”

  Kevelys’s hands shook as he wrapped his hands around the helmet. He looked at his hands and just barely made out a ghostly image between them, though it was so faint he wasn’t sure the image wasn’t really in his imagination. He turned the invisible helmet about and discovered it was only chameleon on the outside; he could see its insides, which were studded with a bewildering array of toggles and touch-spots. He turned the helmet so the screens faced front and placed it on his head. In infrared, Daly’s head showed so clearly Kevelys could make out details. Below his chin there was only the faintest smear of red, so slight it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone not looking intently for it. Kevelys looked at the other Marines; they all showed the same.

  “Buddha’s blue balls,” Kevelys whispered.

  “Sir,” Daly said after giving Kevelys a moment to digest what he was looking at, “if the colonel would like a further demonstration, he can sound an alert and see if base security can catch us as we leave the base.”

  “N-No. No, I don’t think that will be necessary,” the G2 said shakily. He leaned back in his chair, looking from one disembodied head to another. It seemed Marine Force Recon did have at least some capabilities beyond those of an army division’s reconnaissance battalion. Kevelys looked at the very faint red smudges again. “How do you keep track of each other when you’re on patrol?” he asked weakly.

  “We’ve got real sharp vision, sir. That’s a prerequisite for Force Recon.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Samlan Forest, Approximately 250 Kilometers from 104th Mobile Infantry Division Headquarters, Silvasia

  A V-Hook, the army variant of the Marine hopper, a tactical troop carrier aircraft, inserted the Force Recon squad a day’s walk from the area in which G2 thought the Silvasian Liberation Army’s headquarters was hidden. The area was large enough that Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys would have sent in at least a half dozen patrols if he were using his own recon battalion. But Sergeant Daly had insisted the Marines go in alone, and Major General Fitzter had backed him up. The four Marines followed a zigzag route to their area of operations, their designated patrol area. Even before they reached the AO they began finding signs of human movement among the numerous animal tracks. Once inside the AO they found more human tracks and encountered SLA patrols; one the first day, two the second, three during the third morning. The increasing frequency of patrols could be simple coincidence, they thought it more likely that they were getting close to the SLA headquarters. They stayed on the move two-thirds of the day, nibbling recon rations, commonly called “ReRas,” as they went. The ReRas didn’t have much bulk, so their stomachs began feeling hollow after a day, but the ReRas provided all necessary nutrients for men moving slowly and on little sleep. The lack of bulk was important for a recon patrol that followed the injunction to “leave nothing, not even footprints.” They wouldn’t move their bowels until they returned from the patrol. The going was surprisingly easy for a dense, trackless forest. The Samlan was multiple canopy; there was no place where the canopy had fewer than three levels of spreading branches, and some places had more than double that—the Samlan was one of the most heavily canopied forests in all of Human Space. The many canopies of the forest effectively blocked satellite communications and surveillance of the ground under them.

  Sunlight reached the ground only where an upper canopy giant had died and fallen. Those scattered places were home to a profusion of new growth, saplings and ground cover of all sorts struggling for growth and life before taller-growing flora blotted out life-giving light and consigned them to premature death. Where the canopy remained intact, which was most of the forest, the tree trunks grew thick, with several meters of space between them. Little grew there, mostly analogs of moss and algae. But animal life flourished on the ground. Herbivorous animals gnawed moss and algae from rocks and trunks, nibbled fallen branches and fresh leaves and fruits, crunched living bark from the trunks. Some animals made their living more simply, by preying on unwary herbivores. Insectoids scrabbled over the ground, devouring decomposing leaves and fruit missed by the browsers and scraps of flesh, blood, sinew, and bone left by the predators. And ate the waste of all the animals. Some insectoids fluttered about to land on the animals and scour their hides of flaking bits of dermis, or sink proboscides into their flesh to suck their fluids.

  It wouldn’t be accurate to say the Marines moved wraithlike; compared to their movement, the wraiths of Earth legend were noisy trompers. Along the way, without disturbing dinner or diner, they’d passed within touching range
of a carnivore about to spring on a prey beast. They’d stepped over a venomous nyoka that lay in wait for something to come along and brush its trip-tail so it could whip its fanged head around in a killing strike. They’d stopped to let a foraging army of meat-eating hive insectoids pass less than a meter distant; the meat-eaters, which could sense warm-blooded animals tens of meters distant, ignored their presence. And they’d passed closely by many more animals and insectoids without being noticed. With one exception: A browsing dreer bolted when Lance Corporal Wazzen couldn’t resist petting the antelopelike animal.

  Sergeant Daly was on Wazzen before the dreer completed its second bound, his helmet against his junior man’s helmet, his voice carried by conduction through the helmets.

  “Don’t ever do that,” Daly snarled. “If anybody’s nearby he’s going to wonder what startled that thing. Do you want a battalion of bad guys to start searching for us?”

  “B-But it was so cute ,” Wazzen stammered.

  “Cute can make you dead, Marine!”

  “I won’t do it again, Sergeant. I promise.”

  “See that you don’t.” Daly checked his sensors for any sign of human presence. There hadn’t been any before Wazzen startled the dreer, there still wasn’t. No sight, no movement, no scent. If there had been before, he would have initiated an immediate action instead of jumping on his junior man.

  “Let’s catch up.”

  Sergeant Kindy and Corporal Nomonon knew what had happened and that there were no enemy nearby; they had continued moving through the forest. The faint smudges they showed in infrared were almost as invisible as the two Marines were in visual light, but that didn’t matter. What Daly had told Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys about how Force Recon Marines kept in touch wasn’t totally true. They did have sharp vision, but their uniform shirts also had small ultra-violet lights on the shoulders. When Daly handed his helmet to Kevelys, he’d already turned off his UV tracker—and the Marines had their shoulder tracking lights turned off anyway. Daly and Wazzen hustled to rejoin Kindy and Nomonon. Daly was angry about Wazzen’s dumb stunt, but he calmed down quickly. It was only the junior man’s third mission. He had performed well on the first two and, until he gave in to the dreer’s “cute,” had done well so far on the current one. Official Force Recon policy was, one dumb mistake and you’re out. But Daly believed everybody was entitled to one dumb mistake—as long as nobody got hurt by it. Wazzen just had his one. Daly would tell him when they got back onboard ship. For now, he had more immediate concerns.