by Kali Altsoba
Whenever Lee is away, he sends her lit vids that he says “I think you’ll like.” She’s proudly flattered at being taken seriously by a man of his accomplishment and intellect, his position and education and knowledge. She skips like a little girl back to her bunker when the vids arrive, after lightspeed lag time. She likes and understands them, too, and knows that means he likes and understands her. While Lee is off touring medical facilities or briefing the War Cabinet on Kars, Susannah goes back in-the-line with her company and brigade, and out on several dangerous patrols. At night, or whenever she’s off duty, she pours over his vids and ancient books, the kind he loves and tells her to print out. “They must be held and read out loud.” She doesn’t tell him, but she also studies war. And death.
He finagles his schedule to get back to Amasia, to join her during her big leave in the city. After an especially tender bout of lovemaking, he tells her “I’m in love with you.” Not like that or in those simple words. He does it in his own uniquely awkward way. The only way he knows, to announce his insecure feelings. She’s so beautiful, so unattainable to him, he feels he must quote another man’s poetry. That he has none of his own. So he says: ‘My bounty is as boundless as the stars, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.’
She says she might be in love with him, too. In secret, she’s less sure of her feelings. She has a permanent sense of tragedy which upholds her through briefer moments of joy. Whenever she’s with Lee or thinking about him she feels calm, but peacefulness eludes all the other hours of her days and nights.
‘Susannah, I’m still waiting.’
‘I know, but Lee’s here today.’
‘I’m waiting to see you out here.’
‘He’s leaving soon. Then I’ll come.’
***
Susannah studies history and strategy in her down time and reads ancient and modern literature that Lee recommends, usually from a far and secret location, reaching out over the secure milneb. She doesn’t realize it, but she’s wending her way through a quite advanced degree in Classics and Culture, and a second degree in Ancient and Interstellar History.
Yet she’s still “one of the guys” outside the privy of her bunk and milneb chats she has with Lee. So she still gets shit faced drunk with her squad mates. They’re not her friends so much as comrades-of-the-black. That’s OK. Better to get blind, stinking drunk with people you’re not close to anyway. Out here along the black, last night’s drinking buddy might be a spikey pile of mush you shovel into a sack come the first light of morning. For a lot of soldiers, other than Susannah, it’s the same thing with sex. “No, don’t tell me your name. Just fuck me, OK?”
“Just one more time,” Susannah says when she’s asked to dip into the company still by some squad mate. She has to stop doing it. She has higher duties now. She has been promoted three times in the last year, first to corporal then twice more inside the first level sergeant ranks. She thinks it’s because so many NCOs get killed, but it’s not just that. She’s a very good soldier. Wearing stripes also means she gets to go out on more patrols, ‘cause she picks the crew.
It helps her cut back when she finds it hard to drink raw trench hooch after the fine Baku blended scotches Lee introduces her to. “Never drink the single malts,” he warns every time, before launching into what, even for him, amounts to a too righteous rant about “all those gullible malt purists and scotch snobs I meet in the ACU Officer’s Clubs.” She’s heard the speech maybe a dozen times. Or more. She drinks the cheap stuff anyway. Only someone like Lee can get Baku scotches.
Now that the local economy is recovered a bit and adapted to the new soldiers' markets that are springing up on Lemuria, huge fields of hops and wheat and corn and barley mean that local brewing and distilling is enjoying a boom time. These days, Lian Sòng’s regulations are more relaxed and field kitchen beer dispensers are frothy and full in official Mess Tents. Susannah decides to switch from trench hooch to weaker canteen beer, whenever she's underground. ‘Hell, it’s a start.’
Except for the ill advised drinking, she takes NCO duties seriously. So much so that she jumps from sergeant to master sergeant barely six months after making corporal. It does help, of course, that so many NCOs are killed even in a time of low contact. That opens positions to experienced privates of ability like Susannah.
She’s even studying for the butterbar exam. She isn’t sure that she wants to make the jump to 2nd lieutenant, into the officer class. Or to lead a platoon. But her CO says: “You have what it takes. And the division needs junior grades like you. Do it for the 7th, Sergeant Page.”
Lee encourages her, too, but more softly. “Only if you want to, Suze.” These days, his absences stretch from weeks to months, as he’s drawn deeper into Allied politics and his administrative duties expand with the widening war. She gets used to solitude again, grows maybe too comfortable with long distance romance that’s as much intellectual as it is physical. But she really misses the sex.
If she makes 2nd lieutenant, she’ll miss the mateship and the drinking with her old platoon. For she has decided that she’ll draw a line on drinking if she puts on a lieutenant’s double diamonds collar insignia and wears the single gold or butterbar on her sleeve. ‘Cause if she makes 2nd, she’s going to go all in for 1st. She wants to be a one-pip, she decides. ‘Everything has its season.’
Of course she misses Lee more than she’ll miss drinking, but it’s almost as hard for her to admit to intimate feelings as it is for him. Harder, actually. She’s even picking up his habit of turning to ancient texts to express her best and most private thoughts in other people’s words. She has never told Lee that she’s excited by the thought of going into combat. He suspects it, but he wouldn’t understand that it amuses her to meditate in poetry then go out to kill in prose.
***
Susannah can’t remember what peace feels like. Just as well, since the ground war on Amasia is about to celebrate its third year with much expanded fighting. True, things are quieter than any time in the last 400 days. Yet, even her sector is seeing increased enemy patrols and deeper probes.
Something is stirring in the east. Then today, on a meal break, Susannah hears 1st Battalion’s call-to-arms, the one she has been waiting for. ‘The special mission is tonight!’ She pours a half-finished beer into a disposal, grabs her maser and battle kit and hurries to join 2nd Company of 1st Battalion in forward deployment. Tonight, 2nd Company is moving to ambush position 1,750 meters beyond First Trench. That’s a little farther than usual over the near edge of the Yue ming.
She’s eager to see if new tools and tactics the company practiced over the last week will work in real war, against a real enemy. Battalion and division officers, including General Yupanqui and her staff at Division HQ, maybe even General Lian Sòng in New Beijing, wonder the same thing. Tonight they all get an answer.
***
The intel reaching General Nadine Yupanqui is disturbing. She knows the Alliance is gearing up for its first big offensive on Lemuria, though not where it will strike or even when. Even as commanding general of the 7th Assault, her operational clearance doesn’t go that high. But she can read a deployment sheet and understand changes in a supply schedule in her sleep. So she knows the hard defense down the length of Lemuria during the first year of war and slow buildup over the second year is about to pay off. Maybe even in a turning of the tide?
‘Our turn is coming. I hope it’s not an analogue to Operation Roundup. I hope HQ is not being pushed by Kars and Caspia to move before we’re really ready.’
Rikugun also knows something big is brewing. So it starts major raids again, up to battalion and even brigade level, to secure intel and disrupt Alliance plans and preparations. They cross over the black and bring back hundreds of prisoners up-and-down nearly the whole length of triple parallels, trying to pinpoint the coming attack time and location. Men and women die in darkened chambers on a secret base located on the south Thalassa coast, or
succumb to SAC or Kempeitai drugs, beatings, and tortures. They know nothing, surely less than the generals. Their tormentors don’t believe them, so the beatings continue. Interrogators need to tell Rikugun HQ something. The pressure is rising on everybody.
Rikugun prisoners are beaten, tortured, and die on the other side of the Yue ming, too. In secret MI interrogation cells on a hidden base tucked outside New Beijing, away from prying civilian eyes or observation by Alliance troops coming and going on leave, but close enough to the city to be convenient for Lian Sòng’s interrogators. Not so many or so routinely as on the other coast, but still, enough to raise questions. Sòng leaves them entirely alone. No questions asked, just: “Is this reliable? Is this actionable? Can you get me more? I need to know about…”
Well, do you care?
Come on, be honest.
No, I mean it, be honest.
This is a fight to the death.
It’s not a children’s story.
So, what do you really think?
Yupanqui’s right. For the first time, Alliance strategists on Kars and Caspia think they have built up enough strength to attack, to go on offense instead of just hold on at the black. They’ll try to break the stalemate on Amasia in hope that will break the deadlock in the wider Orion War. They might even be right. Who knows what will happen until you actually have the fight? Fools maybe, and liars.
Yet she’s worried. There’s a great stirring on the other side. The enemy is also tensing. He’s sending over far more aggressive and bigger patrols, making capture raids, carrying out those rough interrogations, and killing her troopers with more forward snipers. He’s moving his people into hidden FOPs, and sending over tiny spy bots. She knows he must be preparing to attack, because she’s doing exactly the same things to get ready. She knows the enemy only conceives one solution to all his problems. Attack. She knows the Alliance now has two. It can choose. It controls initiative in the ground war. She gulps her fifth coffee of the morning.
She has just finished reviewing two overnight reports on a vidscroll in her lap. Her personal quarters attached to her Field HQ looks impermanent, even though it hasn’t moved for a year. Just like her, it’s clean, sparse and orderly. Map vids and other sheets hang against two long walls. A simple private’s cot, an armchair, and a small table occupy one of the short ends. A weapons rack guards the other. An outsider would never guess that a general lives here. That’s Nadine Yupanqui. She’s all business and no frills. And way too much coffee!
Rikugun patrols and behind-the-lines movement are increasing in her sector, but at least for now the local balance of forces holds. She runs her free hand over cropped, wire spiked hair, draining the last dreg of strong coffee from a stern mug held firmly in her other hand. It’s her sixth. She doesn’t know what’s coming over, but she’s sure it’s something new and unusual. She thinks it’s unlikely to be a full divisional offensive. Not yet, and not so soon after the drubbing her Enthusiastics gave Rikugun divisions twice already, in this sector. MI in New Beijing agrees.
Yet, Lian Sòng, Nadine Yupanqui, and all the secret types in MI on the coast also agree that Rikugun isn’t close to a spent force. It can still attack, maybe even still win. But it’s in bad shape. Its logistics on Lemuria, always the weak underside of the Imperium military effort, are starting to break down. Convoy wars overhead are slowly swinging to Alliance advantage, cutting Rikugun supplies. Food is said to be short over there, getting more basic by the month. Daurans in the far north can hardly bridge the difference, given their woeful view of logistics and lack of transports. There are ugly rumors that popovs are resorting to fresh barbarisms. Lian Sòng is sending General Leclerc north to see for himself. He’s up there now.
‘Still, something wicked this way comes. Out of the darkness, into the dark.’ Nadine feels a small stab of pain as she accidentally pricks her thumb on a wire hair spike. She sucks at the blood droplet. She knows in her marrow that it will be something more than a regular patrol coming over, and from her intel, that it’s coming across tonight. ‘Probably an oversized trench raid, but with a nasty twist.’ She puts her two best battalions on attack alert, then authorizes an octopus trap she has planned for months. Even before very special packages marked Top Secret arrived from Argos. The surprise may give her forward deployed ‘octopi’ troops a better chance. She’ll accept any advantage the tek folks can give her. Or it could prove to be just another in a long line of cock-ups foisted on the Enthusiastics by the rear area research folks. ‘Who knows what will happen until you fight?’
***
Special shells arrived with the last maglev supply train from the Panthalassa coast that unloaded into her subterranean support bunkers. They came with a set of unusual instructions and new infantry night gear. The crates were unmarked, except for discreet labels that read: Argos Weapons Labs. Courtesy of Director XXX. The manifest said little more: Deliver to Argos 7th Assault, South Lemuria. As part of the special tactical package, unique U-2/3 codes are programed into all division command links and Enthusiastic HUDs: U-2: Must have biodetection gear, body armor, helmet, weapon and magazine. U-3: Must remain in octopus pot until released by direct HQ order. Everyone knows why the Director’s name was blotted out on the crates but not what his, or her, Ops Secret codes are doing to the 7th Assault’s detection filters. It’s worrisome. An unknown civvy parsecs away is fucking with their combat biofilters. To what unknown or awful end?
The command to deploy biofilters is handed to General Yupanqui by a young captain who cleaves to the crates. He’ll not say anything to ordinary fighters, or officers of his own rank or even higher. No matter that Battalion Mess delivers tasty dishes to his personal station, which he sets up right beside the crates. Or that one of the prettiest women in the whole 7th division flirts with him, brazenly suggesting certain rewards will come his way in return for just a little information.
Nadine Yupanqui is reassured to see that the Field Ready Order is vidsigned Major General Gaspard François Leclerc. It’s come straight from the Director of Armaments, her old friend and fellow War Hawk. She almost thinks she can smell a faint odor of almond rising off his name on the vidsign. “Use these prototypes well, Nadine,” says the recorded holo. “May they save lives and speed us closer to final victory. Report back immediately when the first action ends.”
As his bushy browed visage vanishes, Nadine prays the experiment will work. And not just to any wussy or stray dog god. She prays to Supay, Lord of Death and Daemons, Ruler of the Salamanca, of the Ukhu Pacha ‘world below,’ special god-guardian of all miners and trench diggers. She prays to Supay not just because that’s her personal god and tradition, but more because the lives at risk tonight belong to her command in Argos 7th. And it’s a helluva thing to play games with real lives. That sort of thing is best left to cruel daemons and crueler gods.
A week ago, General Yupanqui finally told those units chosen for the octopus mission what arrived in the crates, and why the biofilter codes were changed. They love it. Susannah can’t wait to go to the Yue ming. As she enters her security code and rereads the tactical plan once more, Nadine’s hopes rise. She’s a cautious general. She’ll withhold judgment until the system proves itself tonight. Still…
As night falls, she orders a sheen of bioluminescence laid down, still hours before the expected attack. The film coats the ground from 1,000 to 3,000 meters out from Alliance First Trench. Batteries of four deuces bark into the night like the hairless dogs guarding the Ukhu Pacha. They fire in the usual pitch to dampen suspicion on the other side. Her orders to subcommanders are: “Keep everything as normal looking as you can. Tonight is all about surprise. Double surprise.”
Nadine signals New Beijing, letting Lian Sòng know that the special operation she ordered is about to get underway. She closes the message with another prayer, even though she knows her friend and superior is not a believer in her tradition. “Supay bless this endeavor on which we embark. May the God of Salamanca be kind to mortals, and pr
otect all miners and martyrs.”
***
Before the shelling starts, Susannah and 600 more Enthusiastics, designated as octopus skirmishers, put on their helmets and pull HUDs low over their faces, then engage the new biofilters. “First Battalion is locked and ready. Move out!” The battalion moves quickly to the prepared ambush site, protected on both its flanks by forward deployed bot guns and 20 human snipers also wearing the new filters. It encounters no resistance on the way. That’s what all the extra small patrols were up to over the past week: clearing this area of Rikugun spy bots, auto guns and forward snipers. Halfway to the position, medium mortars klics behind send silent bioshells scudding overhead, to fly far beyond the line of grass dunes.
Clear of the firing tubes, smart shells switch to independent flight-and-evade patterns before spraying a fine mist that coats sparse surface grass in front of the Enthusiastics’ main position. Then they happily boost, continuing over the black to just beyond Rikugun First Trench, landing with high explosive thuds! That’s to conceal their true function and purpose, which is already accomplished. Observers in FOPs report that the biospray is laid in and appears undiscovered by the enemy.