by Steve Perry
Em frowned. “What—?”
Jo had already charged, and as Em shifted, dropped, and extended her lead hand to cover, Jo fell to the ground on her side, sliding below Em’s defense. She hooked her right ankle behind Em’s lead ankle and thrust with her left foot in a kick at Em’s thigh—
—Em twisted away a hair, but that’s what Jo wanted, and her instep took Em behind the knee, bending it and throwing the fem off her stance—
—Jo came up, fast, onto one foot in a balance that seemed impossible, and dropped with an elbow that caught Em on the shoulder blade, taking her to the ground—
—Em dived, rolled, and came up in a half turn, but she was a quarter beat behind, and Jo was there to deliver the spear hand into Em’s solar plexus. Painful with a bare hand, but a telling strike had her fingers been a knife.
Em’s belly muscles were like thick leather, and while she obviously felt it, there wasn’t any real damage, but had it been claws or a blade, the match was done—
Em knew: “Jebati me! Tzit, tzit, tzit!”
Kay whickered. She had said much the same more than a few times when dancing with Jo Captain. Humans sometimes did something so unexpected it stalled one for just long enough to make their point. No normal Vastalimi would have thrown that attack.
Probably a normal human wouldn’t have, either.
Em said, “How can you possibly leap onto one foot and hold that balance?”
“Formentara,” Jo said. “I sport a proprioception aug she created.”
“Most humans would not have this thing, would they?”
“Nope. But you won’t know if one does until you get there.”
“Point made. And the comment about a . . . rhinosaur?”
“A nonsensical distraction. While you were thinking about it, it bought me an eighth of a second.”
“It did. Again?”
“I’d like to, but I have to go see Rags about the mission.”
Em nodded. “I am in your debt.”
“Everything I learned about dancing with Vastalimi I got from Kay. Thank her for it.”
Em looked at Kay.
Kay said, “She is too modest.”
“I have noticed.”
“Gotta run, fems.”
After she was gone, Em turned to Kay. “It does seem as if we have found ourselves an exemplary group of humans.”
“I believe it to be so. Perhaps you might favor me with a match?”
“I would. Although you seem to have picked up enough from Jo Captain so that you are equally unpredictable.”
“It pleases me to hear you say so. Predictability can get one killed.”
– – – – – –
Gunny was practicing her draw when Jo arrived at the staging area. For a human with only the most basic of augs, she was passing quick, and outside Rags himself, nobody in the unit could outshoot Gunny with a small arm of any kind. And Rags only because of some kind of freak talent he had.
Gun in holster. Blur. Gun on target. A considerably less quick return to the holster. No hurry with that, the shooting was gonna be all over with and if you were still standing, you could take all day to reholster your weapon.
Jo said, “Getting slow in your old age.”
“Don’t Ah know it. That shoulder has never gotten back to a hundred percent.”
“It was a joke, Gunny.”
“Might as well save your breath,” Gramps said as he appeared in the doorway. “A fire brick’s got more sense of humor than she does.”
Gunny looked at Gramps. “Ah dunno about that, old man. Every time Ah see your ancient face, it makes me want to laugh.”
“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Chocolatte.”
Now Gunny did laugh.
“I stand corrected about the sense of humor,” Gramps said. He smiled.
Jo shook her head. One of these days, the two of them would find themselves alone and maybe have to deal with how they really felt about each other. She’d love to be a fly on the wall when that happened.
“Rags just got back. Might as well come on in and let’s hear what he’s got to say. You too, Gunny, if you can tear yourself away from your obsessive practice in death dealing.”
– – – – – –
Jo already knew the gist, having gotten it from Rags when it was first brought up just after their visit to Vast, but she didn’t know the on-the-ground specifics. Rags had gone and talked to his old friend General Wood, who now commanded a well-respected private army called The Line. Rags had liked what he heard.
They had flown south, and here they were.
She raised an eyebrow when he was done, but Gramps spoke first:
“Water rights?” He looked left, did a slow scan to the right, squinting as he did.
“What are you lookin’ for?” Gunny asked. “You forget who and where you are?”
“What am I looking for? Cowboys, Amerinds, bison, camels, like that,” Gramps said. “Because we must have stumbled into a time slip. Water rights? On Earth?”
“It’s complicated,” Rags said. “And it doesn’t matter as far as we are concerned. We have to scope and report, and since they are paying us to the finale, occupy some ground once the shooting starts.”
“I remember the offer, but how many are they actually paying for?” That from Jo.
“Short company: three rifle platoons, one ranger, one light air- and groundcraft, one support, including electronics. Hundred and ten troops. Relatively-low-velocity ammo. Total force maximum is two kay each side. There will be medical support and supply available if we need it.”
“Four thousand. That’s a good-sized dustup,” Gunny said.
“Biggest allowed on Earth in sixteen years,” Rags said. “We need to field our fastest and sharpest for recon, and we needed to do it yesterday. We have fourteen days beginning now when we are theoretically not being shot at.”
They nodded. Theoretically. The official stance was supposed to mean no engagements resulting in the exchange of fire until the official start date, but everybody knew that recon resulted in clashes—a silenced sniper rifle or a knife in the back? It happened, and Monitors sometimes missed it—or deliberately looked the other way. When big money was on the line, any advantage you could get without being caught was worth a lot. A few hundred thousand noodle to bribe a Monitor to turn his or her back while you did something not quite covered under the rules? Cheap insurance.
Industrial mercs were like samurai—you were supposed to be vigilant all the time. If you weren’t ready for an enemy’s action once you stepped onto the field, it was your own fault—you knew what he was and what he wanted, and it was all snakes and scorpions.
“We’ve got all the geosat and overfly maps and images in the tactical files, but there are some gaps; we need to tread the dirt and smell the flowers, you know the drill.”
They knew.
“Let’s get it out to the others, set up an S&T plan, and get this going. Jo?”
“I’ll tap people for the initial rangings,” she said.
It had been a while since they’d been in a real war; mostly they had been doing extractions, retrievals, escort duty. It would be nice to not have to worry about who did what to whom, when, where, and why, and get back to the simple business of recon and combat.
TWO
Wink honed the edge of his sheath knife against a leather strap, finishing the task. The knife was a stubby-bladed spearpoint, thick across the spine, with a fat, cylindrical handle, Damascus steel, and an oval guard made of the same material.
He was a doctor and a surgeon; he favored shorter knives because he knew where to stick them and how to achieve the best results, going and coming. He looked up to see Jo approaching. He touched the edge with one thumb. It was as sharp as it was going to get. He tucked the knife away into the belt sheath behind h
is right hip.
“Hey, Jo.”
“Wink. I’m putting together my ground team for the initials. How is Singh doing?”
Singh, late of Ananda, had been with them a relatively short time, but he was a bright kid and dedicated. He had gotten too close to a concussive grenade while training and lost an eardrum. The new one had taken a while to regen, but it was back to normal. The auditory hair cells should also be up to par, but Wink hadn’t tested them yet.
“Should be good to go. You taking him along?”
“Yeah, I think so. He’s still a little green, but he picks up stuff quick, and he won’t learn sitting on the sidelines. Gunny’ll keep an eye on him.”
“So it’s sneak’n’peak?”
“For two weeks, then we go online with the rest of the army. One week hot, we’re done.”
“Been a while since we did a war,” he said. “You know, I’m caught up here, the machines and my assistants can handle things. You might ought to have a decent medic out there with you.”
“A decent medic? You know any?”
“Ow. That’s cold, fem.”
She smiled. “Rags would kick me seven ways to Sunday if I let you go play in this situation, Doctor Death-wish.”
“I only want to dance, not die.”
“You are an adrenaline junkie.”
“You have no room to talk.”
“But I am not the medic who needs to be in one piece to help keep the rest of us in good health. You stay in camp unless the colonel okays it.”
“I’ll have a word with him.”
“You probably already have—you know how Gramps likes to spy on everything. If I had to guess, I’d bet that your answer will be a fat ‘No.’ And Rags won’t be going out to play, either.”
“You are a harsh mistress, Josephine Sims.”
“I try.”
After she was gone, he smiled. They had a history, albeit brief; a short, athletic sexual liaison after their adventures on Ramal, and he much enjoyed the memory of it. They were all friends here, sometimes with benefits, but probably there was no future in that direction for the two of them. They both loved putting themselves at risk too much, testing to see how close to the edge they could come and survive. It wouldn’t do to make any deep connections with anybody while they did such things; it wouldn’t be fair to a partner, even one who knew of it and why.
Jo knew. And there was Kay, who also knew. The Vastalimi had an offhand disregard for dying that came pretty close to a shrug. And Kay was . . . one of the most interesting sexual partners he’d ever had, too.
The idea of a three-way polyamory sometimes arose in his thoughts . . .
Too early in the day to be going down those lanes, Dr. Horny . . .
He voxaxed his com: “Singh?”
After a beat, the response. “Sah?”
“You need to drop round the office and let me check your hearing again.”
“Sah.”
He thought about telling the kid why but decided to let Jo do it. She’d enjoy the smile on his face when she told him . . .
– – – – – –
For the first run, it was just Jo and Kay. They were the most experienced, the quickest, save for Em, and the best two-person team in CFI. They knew each other’s moves, they knew their own, and it was unlikely that the opposition would have anybody to match them.
They met with Wink, Gunny, Gramps, and Formentara for the final rundown.
Gramps led off: “Here, take this.”
“What is this?” Gunny said.
“Why, it’s a map, child,” Gramps said. “A two-dimensional representation of the forest wherein we are about to commence our recon op.”
Gunny gave him a fuck-you look. “Ah know it’s a map, you doddering fossil! And Ah also know this is Earth, and they have so many geosats circling you can footprint any spot on the planet from twenty thousand kilometers up sharp enough to read a flatscreen Bible over somebody’s shoulder! So why are we looking at this . . . parchment sheet instead of a holoproj real-time goog? Future shock too much for you?”
“No, because your ordinary visible-spectrum satcam stops at the tree crowns, and what we want to see won’t show up on IR or pradar. Part of what we need to do is update this map—remind me to teach you the difference between ‘paper’ and ‘parchment,’ by the way.”
“What do you mean, it won’t show up on IR or pradar? Both of those should paint the ground like those tree crowns are made of air.”
“Ah, but there’s the rub.” He grinned.
Jo, standing next to Kay, added her smile to the mix. Always entertaining, the Gunny and Gramps show.
Gunny turned to look at Jo. “What is this . . . unwrapped mummy blathering on about?”
Jo started to speak, but Gramps picked it back up. “It’s the trees, Chocolatte. Which, if you had read your background packet, you would know are native to the area but genetically modified Cupressus arizonica.”
“So what?”
“Commonly known as ‘Arizona cypress,’ the natural version is a medium-sized evergreen tree that grows to between ten and twenty-five meters in height. These have been genetically modified so that they achieve a height of forty meters, with a broader crown.”
“Uh-huh. It’s a fucking tree. Making it taller and fatter stops pradar and IR how? Are you gonna get to it or keep dancing?”
Jo said, “Don’t let him give you a hard time, Gunny, we didn’t know it either until the guy from Tejas told us. It’s one of the reasons they hired us.”
Gramps said, “Attend: Back in the day, there were a lot of revolutionary factions on Earth, peaking during the late twenty-first century. There were ecoterrorist groups, tax revolts, multinational corporate infighting. Some of them came and went in a hurry; some of them lasted a lot longer.”
Gunny said, “Ah knew that. Primary ed stuff. Again, so what? Why the history lecture? You do it just to fuck with me, don’t you?”
He ignored that: “You recall hearing about a group called Children of the Alamo?”
Gunny shook her head. “No. Ah do know about the Alamo.”
Formentara said, “The what-amo?”
“A prespaceflight war,” Gunny said. “A small force of soldiers and civilians, somewhere around two hundred and fifty, were holed up in a makeshift adobe fort, an old religious mission, called ‘Alamo.’ The defenders gave a good account of themselves, but they were outnumbered five to one; eventually, they were overcome and slaughtered.
“The battle became a rallying cry of the Alamo’s defenders, whose armies went on to defeat their opponents: ‘Remember the Alamo!’”
“That’s the war,” Jo said. “The defeated group was forced to cede a lot of territory to the victors, which became part of a new country. There were some who never got over the loss, apparently. One faction determined to reverse their fortunes, to win back the lost real estate.”
“Did they?” Wink asked.
“No, but not for lack of trying for multiple generations over several hundred years. They hold grudges a long time here on the homeworld.”
Kay shook her head.
Jo continued: “To shorten Gramps’s long story, the CotA group eventually became insurgent, tried to foment a revolution. It failed, but along the way, they did some things, one of which was to create and grow several forests of the local cypress tree throughout the region. The plants could be made to take up minerals and metals from the fertilized soil that would then concentrate in the wood and needles in specific proportions.”
Gunny got it. “No shit? Organic shielding?”
“Grow-your-own Faraday cage and chaff all in one.
“It had been done before, on a smaller scale,” Gramps said. Before Gunny could say anything else, he said, “I looked it up. Anyway, they were in it for the long haul, and once the t
rees were big enough, the revolutionaries conducted much of their business underneath the canopies. Simple, but effective.”
“Nobody noticed they couldn’t see through the trees from above?”
“Not for a long time, there was no reason to. IR was mostly used for weather, and little forests don’t create much of that. Long-range pradar was expensive and used mostly for military applications, and dinky forests in the middle of nowhere weren’t considered a problem.”
“Hidin’ where nobody would look. Or could if they tried.”
“So it was,” Gramps said. “Eventually, the would-be revolutionaries fell apart, ran down, and went away, but the trees they planted were hardy, and they are mostly still there. Which brings us to us . . .”
Gunny nodded. “Got it.”
“So Kay and I will make the first pass and record what we see. Gunny will be backup, Gramps on the com, Formentara will assemble the vids,” Jo said.
“What about me?” That from Wink. “I talked to Rags.”
“Yeah, you did, and don’t lie, I know what he said. You and he can have some beer and argue about smashball stats. Or count your tongue depressors.”
“Come on—”
“Don’t start. We don’t need you there, and we might need you here.”
“Crap.”
“Life is hard, Doc,” Jo said.
THREE
There was an old saying, “Trust, but verify,” that amused Gramps whenever he thought of it. It was populist babble that sounded meaningful but was a contradiction on the face of it: If you trusted somebody, there was no need to verify what they said.
One of the first truths he had learned when he had begun doing backgrounding for CFI was that a lot of people lied. Some merely shaded the truth in their favor a bit, a little spin, a little polish to shine a thing brighter; some went straight to damned lies, and would space a long way to avoid any more of a connection with reality than was absolutely necessary to sell a story. People would put twice as much effort into a lie as telling the truth, and as often as not, for no reason he could see.
Truth was the default and easy. Lies were hard to track; you had to keep them straight.
