Soldiers

by John Dalmas

  The assault craft swished by overhead, most of them. A few must have taken "crippling hits" themselves; they landed obediently as casualties. If they hadn't, and promptly, the "enemy" would have been penalized, and the pilots put on report.

  The ground was cold but the sun bright, and Esau put a forearm over his eyes. He wondered if Jael had been hit, and if perhaps they should have signed up for bottling. If this had been a real fight, he told himself, and the hit he'd taken had been a hard pulse, signing wouldn't have made any difference. Because surely that had been a slammer. It would have blown his guts, lungs, heart and spine, all to Tophet.

  He was aware of 2nd and 3rd Battalions passing him, trotting now. The sound of firing remained intense. It seemed odd to be lying there out of it. He was going to miss some of the action. It occurred to him to sit up and look around, see what was going on. Their own floaters should be up again, suppressing enemy fire.

  But it was easier to just lie there with his eyes closed, feeling himself drift into sleep. Then a medic gripped his arm, and he wakened.

  "Where are you hit?"

  "Tailbone, from behind. It would have been one of the killer craft. If it was real, I'd be deader'n Tophet."

  "Okay. I'm going to give you a shot for the pain, just in case."

  The man pretended to inject Esau in the side of the neck, then taped a fake syringe to his patient's field jacket and hurried on. Esau let his eyes close again. Who knew, he thought, what would happen when they got into real combat, back home on New Jerusalem. Wyzhnyny weapons were thought to be pretty much the same as human weapons. "Physics is the same everywhere," Sergeant Hawkins had said. Jerries weren't taught physics, but Esau had gotten the basic idea; only certain things were possible. But the Wyzhnyny had four legs under them, and might be stronger than him. Might all of them carry slammers.

  "Esau," said Speaker Crosby, "they are way to heck stronger than you are." He patted his horse on the shoulder. "They're near as big as this fella, with arms in proportion."

  Esau decided to keep Clancy with him for protection, and looked around for the big hound, but couldn't see him anywhere. Then realized he'd begun to dream. Clancy was a long long ways off, and so was Speaker Crosby. It don't matter, he told himself. You're already dead anyway.

  Shortly afterward an armored ambulance landed a few yards away. Without speaking, two medics laid him carefully on an AG stretcher, then took him to the ambulance, where another medic secured the stretcher on brackets and turned on the "warm field."

  ***

  Soon afterward they arrived at a field "hospital" in the forest, a complex of tents beneath the trees. It was supposed to be protected by a concealment screen so the enemy couldn't find it from the air. The tents were like shallow, upside-down bowls, protected by colors generated by their camouflage fields. The medics moved quickly and smoothly, transferring the casualties to a receiving tent. Calling him dead on arrival, they put Esau in a body bag, and moved him to a morgue tent.

  The activity had wakened him again, and because he actually was alive, the bag had been pressed shut only to his waist. He sat up and looked around. There were no attendants in this tent, but the trainee on the floor beside him was also looking around. "Well," the man said. His voice was quiet. "So this is what it's like to be dead."

  "Not hardly," Esau answered.

  "What's your company?"

  "B, 2nd Platoon. Name is Esau Wesley. Yours?"

  The other didn't answer at once, as if thinking about it. "Simon Justice," he said at last. "E Company, 3rd Platoon. Can you say bunch of foolishness?"

  "What do you mean?"

  The man's gesture took in the tent, perhaps the whole hospital, or planet. "All of this. Pretending to fight, pretending to get shot, pretending to be dead. All of it."

  Esau decided he didn't like Simon Justice. Didn't like his tone of voice, didn't like his pretense of superiority. "It's not foolishness," Esau replied. He didn't expect to change the man's mind, but the statement required an answer. "We'll be glad we've gone through it when we get back to New Jerusalem."

  "Huh! We'll never get to New Jerusalem. The government's going to send us somewhere else, to put down an uprising." His tone suggested scorn for anyone who didn't realize that.

  "Where'd you get that notion?" Esau asked.

  "Why, it's plain to see. A four-legged critter with a man stuck on the front?" He snorted his scorn.

  "That's no more unlikely than what you said." Esau paused. "Are you calling Captain Mulvaney a liar? Or General Pak?"

  "That's about right. Yeah."

  Esau moved his hands to the open edge of his body bag, separating the closure all the way to his knees. And got up. "Get out of that bag and we'll talk about this," he said.

  By that time others in the tent were watching, their eyes on Esau now. The man who called himself Simon Justice, on the other hand, had decided to lay back down again.

  "What's the matter?" Esau demanded. "You were big on talk, with all that bullshit."

  "It's against regulations to fight," the man answered. "Otherwise I'd get out of this bag and teach you a lesson."

  With a single step, Esau was leaning over him, gripped him, pulled him to his feet and jerked him close, bag and all. "Simon Justice," he said, "you're a liar and a coward. And unless you take all that back… "

  Another soldier was on his feet now. "A bigger liar'n you know," he said. "He's not Simon Justice. I'm Simon Justice. He's not even in 3rd Platoon. E Company, yes-I've seen him around-but not in 3rd Platoon. So if anybody beats him up, I'm the one ought to do it."

  Esau's eyes widened, then he barked a laugh, and grinned at the real Simon Justice. "Well well! He's all yours. Have at it!" He let go the counterfeit, who dropped to the floor in self protection, gripping his body bag closed and yelling at the top of his lungs, "Help! Help! Murder!" waking whatever corpses weren't already awake.

  Before either Esau or the real Simon Justice could decide what to do, a Terran medic stepped inside. His sleeves had sergeant's stripes, and above his jacket pocket the name "Sinisalo, Urho E." "What the hell's going on in here?" he barked. "You! And you! Get back in those body bags."

  While they did, he murmured softly, as if to someone invisible beside him. Then he looked down at the false Simon Justice. "Are you the one who yelled?"

  "Yes, sir," the liar answered softly. "They said they were going to beat me up." His voice was almost too faint to hear. He realized his situation. There were maybe a dozen-at least several others in the tent who'd heard the exchange. He'd never in the world lie his way out of this situation.

  Sinisalo frowned, then looked around and pointed to a watching, listening corpse. "You," said the medic. "What happened in here?"

  The man told him, closely enough.

  Sinisalo looked down at the liar. "Give me your dog tags."

  Only the liar's eyes moved.

  "That's an order, soldier!"

  The liar shook his head, encouraged by the apparency that he wouldn't be beaten up.

  A lieutenant hurried in, a Sikh wearing a white turban and Medical Service insignia. "I'm the provost marshal," he said to Sinisalo. "What's going on here?" The provost marshal's post was only one of several he covered, the one he'd least expected to require his attention. His military police unit consisted of one man-himself. When he'd gotten the call, he'd grabbed a stunner, a belt recorder, and a set of handcuffs, and hurried to the morgue. But he was a Sikh, with five years' military experience, and a cram course in the basics of the provost marshal's job. He'd make it go right.

  When Sinisalo had described what he'd found and heard, the provost marshal stood over the liar and reached down. "Your dog tags," he said.

  Again the liar refused, clasping himself with his arms. The provost knew Jerrie strength, so he turned to Esau. "Sergeant, take his dog tags."

  Esau crouched beside the liar, pulled open the body bag, grabbed the man's field jacket and hoisted him to his feet. Hurriedly the liar gave up his
dog tags. Esau handed them to the provost marshal, who read them and scowled. "Private Thomas Crisp," he said.

  He manacled the now compliant Crisp, then went around the morgue with his belt recorder and got the name, serial number, and unit of each "corpse" there.

  "All right," he said, "Wesley, Justice, Crisp, come with me. You other casualties, continue in your roles." He turned to Sinisalo. "Sergeant, you come too."

  As he herded his three corpses toward the hospital admin tent, the provost marshal drew his belt comm and called for an MP floater from Division. The hospital had no place to incarcerate anyone.

  ***

  Before the lieutenant had finished questioning his three Jerries, two other things happened. The MP floater arrived, with six MPs led by a sergeant. And an orderly arrived to report a genuine casualty. A trainee in the maneuvers had been shot in the back with a hard pulse, a slammer pulse. It had scrambled his innards-bones and organs. And all the power slugs used in the maneuvers, including those in the aircraft, had supposedly been for soft pulses.

  Saboteurs again! the lieutenant thought, thinking of the parachute incident, the major ordnance and equipment-checking project that had grown out of it, and what was found. When the floater had taken off with the prisoner and the principal witnesses, the lieutenant returned to the morgue to get statements from the other corpses.

  ***

  Esau fell asleep again even before the MP floater took off, almost as he buckled himself in. Take advantage of your opportunities, he'd thought as they'd walked out to it. He'd heard how it worked for "casualties," from guys who'd gone through it the past couple of days. In an hour or two he'd be reclassified from corpse to combat replacement, and flown to some company other than his own, to fit in as best he could till the exercise was finished. On New Jerusalem, of course, there'd be no replacements, but the general didn't want his casualties to miss out on the training.

  Actually it was a dozen hours before he was reassigned. Division's provost marshal let him sleep for eight hours before questioning him. And learned nothing he didn't already have on cube.

  Chapter 39

  Digging for Roots

  The weather had been pleasant for the Muhlbach maneuvers, with mostly sunny days, and temperatures reaching into the 60s. The nights had been near 40, with brilliant starscapes. The trainees might have enjoyed their five-day test, if they'd had enough to eat and at least a few hours a day of sleep. But the maneuvers were more than a test of tactics, leadership, and readiness. Their commanding general wanted them to discover their tenacity, and endurance of privation, so he'd cranked up the hardship factor.

  They'd handled it well.

  Maneuvers were the heart of unit training, and at least as vital for General Pyong Pak Singh as for his troops. Pak had never experienced actual combat, never directed a battle except in electronic games. So he lived maneuvers as realistically as he could. He directed his division from a floater; camped in the field, was often on the move, ate field rations, and caught catnaps when the situation allowed. Though he slept more than his men. His alertness, or lack thereof, was important to every man in his "corps," his expanded division-Jerries, Indi Armored, air wings, and Luneburger Engineers.

  He'd delighted in the competition with his opposing counterpart, Major General Pauli Nachtigal of the Luneburger 4th Infantry Division, and found strong satisfaction in his troops, who'd performed well-even E Company, 2nd Regiment which, with fifteen men in the stockade, was shorthanded, and perhaps a bit demoralized by the defections-while the opposing Burger infantry division was really good, Masadan trained.

  Now that the Muhlbach maneuvers were over, and everyone had had a long night's sleep, the troops were enjoying a day off. In camp, for there'd be no passes till the matter of defections was sorted out. A day off with naps and base food: all the roast pork, the barley with pork gravy, freshly baked still-warm bread with butter and jam, pie with good cheese from Luneburger's Mennonite dairies… and all the ice cream they could eat! Few if any of his Jerries had seen ice cream before they'd joined the army. Few had even heard of it. It had become their favorite, if infrequent, dessert.

  If the troops had the day off, their general didn't. He was at his desk at 0730, working his way through his In basket. At 0930 he met with his division provost marshal, Captain Raymond Coyote Singh, and the CO of 2nd Regiment's 2nd Battalion, Major Amar Kalnins Singh. Of urgent necessity, the subject was the defections-the refusal by fifteen members of E Company to serve. Briefly the three officers reviewed the basic known facts, without speculating on the roots. Then Captain Coyote reported on E Company's Private Thomas Crisp, and his clumsy attempt to spread disaffection in the field hospital's morgue. He had his own cubes and those recorded by the hospital's provost marshal, with accounts provided by Sergeant Sinisalo, and by Wesley, Justice, and the bystanders. And by Crisp.

  The meeting was interrupted by chirping from Pak's intercom. His monitor told him it was Administrative Sergeant Major Watanabe. Frowning, Pak spoke to his pickup. "What is it?" he asked.

  The answer came via the pickup in his right ear. "General, Corporal Isaiah Vernon is here, with information that may be important to the defections matter. Vernon's a bot attached to 2nd Regiment, 1st Battalion. Would you like to see him now?"

  Pak knew the name. "Bring him in, Sergeant," Pak said, then broke the connection and looked at Coyote. "Captain, record this. Apparently it's information on our problem."

  The sergeant major opened the door. A seven-foot warbot stood behind him. "General," said Watanabe, "this is Corporal Vernon."

  Vernon stepped inside and stopped. "Thank you, Sergeant Major," Pak said in dismissal, and the door closed. "What do you have for us, Corporal?"

  "General, the night before we went on maneuvers, Private Jeremiah Spieler, Speaker Spieler, came to my hut and told me a story. He and I were friends. We'd been in B Company together, and back home I was a student speaker. He told me that the evening before, after lights out, some men came to his tent and woke him up. They told him they needed his advice. So he went outside with them. It turned out they didn't want advice. They wanted him to help them spread a message in B Company. Quietly, to men he trusted.

  "The one that did the talking said the Wyzhnyny were sent by God," Vernon went on, "to overthrow a corrupt and Godless Commonwealth government. And that God wants his people-all colonists and Terrans who follow his commandments and the leadership of Christ-to turn against the government. Refuse orders and stand against evil, even at the risk of their lives."

  The Peace Front line all the way, Pak thought. "Why isn't Spieler telling me this himself?" he asked.

  If there was a way of reading a warbot's reactions, comparable to reading an organic's face, Pak didn't know it. But the two or three-second lag suggested surprise. "Why, General, sir, Speaker Spieler was killed in the maneuvers. Someone shot him in the back with a hard pulse. From a slammer, I'm told."

  The statement stunned Pak. He'd heard there'd been an accidental death, a shooting. This story made it seem deliberate. "Did they-the men who talked with Spieler-did they say who told them all that?"

  "Jeremiah didn't say. They did tell him they were part of a group headed by speakers, but he was sure the man who did the talking wasn't one. Because when he tried to quote scripture, he got it all wrong."

  "Hmm. This was-what then? A week ago?"

  "Six nights ago he told me about it, sir."

  "Why didn't Spieler, or you, inform your sergeants?"

  "The speaker said he was afraid of them, sir. And he didn't know who they were. I asked. He couldn't see their names in the dark, nor their faces well enough. All he could say was, the one who did the talking sounded like us-like someone from New Jerusalem-but taller than just about any of us gets. As tall as Captain Mulvaney, he said."

  Hmm. That would be more than six feet, Pak thought. "Afraid. Did they threaten him?"

  "Not exactly. They told him to be careful not to say anything about it to anyone he didn'
t trust. They'd tell him when it was time. But Jeremy said it sounded like a warning."

  "But Spieler told you."

  "Yessir. I guess he needed to tell someone, and knew he could trust me."

  "Why didn't you tell someone? Your sergeant."

  "I should have. But we had breakfast at 0630 the next morning and left on maneuvers. And it seemed like just talk; I didn't suppose anything would come of it. Surely nothing like someone shooting Jeremiah. Or that anyone would quit the army. And we'll be leaving for home in another month; I told myself that when we got there, the facts would speak for themselves."

  Pak nodded thoughtfully. "Thank you, Corporal. You've been very helpful. Say nothing to anyone about talking to us. And if you see anything, or remember anything that may help us identify the traitors, report it to your battalion commander promptly.

  "You may go now."

  A gentle giant, Pak thought as he watched the warbot leave. I wonder how he'll do in combat.

  Well enough, he decided. Major Somphavanh Ruiz Singh, CO of the division's bot contingent, was an excellent officer who'd given special attention to selecting his noncoms. But he'd ask him about Vernon and see what he said.

  ***

  After Pak closed the meeting, Captain Coyote went to his computer and checked on several things. Near the end of advanced training, the various company commanders, in conference with their platoon leaders and platoon sergeants, had evaluated their troops for promotion. And Spieler had not made lance corporal. His platoon sergeant had characterized him as very conscientious, and hard-working, but passive. He'd probably make lance corporal at the end of unit training, and go no further.