by Mark Wandrey
“You have a way with people. Sure, both good and bad, but you knew how to use your special skills to cut deals, make alliances, and get what you want. Most people in your old profession don’t fare well.”
“Neither did I, in the end.”
“You know, I’m not so sure you wouldn’t have come out of that as well.” Murphy shut off the clipboard-sized computer. “Go down to the surface of R’Bak, sniff around, see what you can find out.”
“That’s about as nebulous of a mission as you could give me.”
“It’s what I have. Will you do it, or not?” Murphy asked.
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have choices.”
Yeah, Vat thought, bad and worse. “Sure, I’ll go on your scavenger hunt. I have to do it by myself?”
“No, take those four dregs with you.” Murphy reached into his desk, put a box on it, and slid it toward Vat.
Vat picked it up and opened it. Two silver bars were inside.
“I don’t know what happened to you, but you’ll need those. I’m reinstating you as a first lieutenant.”
“You have the authority to do that?” Murphy shrugged, and Vat laughed. “Why trust me with a commission?”
“Captain Mara Lee talked to me. She seems to think you deserve a chance. So you get one.” His face became as emotionless as a manikin’s. “Just one.”
* * *
The interface craft came to a stop. As soon as the engines cut out, the crew came forward to open hatches and prepare it for another flight. The air base was small but bustling, and Vat took a moment to take it all in.
The first thing he noticed was the heat; it was damn hot. Not humid hot like Georgia or Louisiana, but Phoenix hot. He looked up and shielded his eyes from the two stars blazing in the sky. One was similar in size to the star he grew up with, Sol, only orange. The other was much smaller and yellow-white. In the coming months, the small one would get closer and closer until it burned nearly every living thing off the planet’s equatorial belt. I’m on an alien planet, he thought. A little smile crossed his face. This is kinda cool.
The patchy ground cover near the field was a strange shade of green, and the sky was not quite blue. By the sad look of the not-quite grass, it was already feeling the effects of the approaching Searing. A small flying insect went by, and he swatted at it, hoping R’Bak didn’t have mosquitoes.
“Do you need a ride, Lieutenant?”
The man had to say it twice before Vat realized he was the lieutenant in question. He glanced at the bar sewn into the epaulets on the worn Vietnam-era camouflage duty uniform he was wearing. The only thing new was the nametape: Vat. He’d insisted on it instead of Thomas. He looked at the speaker, a kid no more than 25, with a decidedly Middle Eastern appearance—though no accent—who was driving some sort of box truck.
“Sure,” he said. “Where’s the FOB?”
“It’s just past that point of land sticking out from the mountain,” the kid said, pointing.
Vat got into the truck for the short drive. “You can just drop me off at the edge of camp,” he said. “I’d like to get a feel for it.”
“Sure,” the kid said, and he drove to the base, humming the whole time.
The truck stopped at the first tent. “Anything else?” the kid asked.
“I’m fine, Corporal,” he said. “Can you aim me at the recon tent?”
“Yes, sir. Go around the chuckwagon, and it’s just past the showers.”
“Thanks,” he said. The corporal gave him a salute, which he returned, then the kid drove off.
The activity at the camp varied, depending on where you were.
The motor pool was nonstop busy. Vat didn’t recognize any of the vehicles and guessed they were all local, taken from the satraps by Lost Soldiers. Mechanics and drivers were working and examining what looked like APC-Mad Max hybrids. Others were inventorying parts and stacking the strangely designed local fuel cans; they reminded him of hexagonal insect cells.
The field hospital was quiet. A few people were being treated for non-life-threatening conditions. One of the native healer women sat with a man, held his hand, and talked quietly. He’d love to have listened in to try and pick up the dialect; instead, he moved on.
At the far side of the camp were the helipads. A single helicopter that was vaguely reminiscent of a Blackhawk squatted on an expanded metal pad. Seeing the bird brought back memories and reminded him he was trillions of miles and over a hundred years from what he’d called home. The pilot was in the cockpit, and he wondered if was Mara before remembering she was flying Hueys. And he was pretty sure the pilot was a man.
He found the chuckwagon, a big truck which opened up into cooking and prep facilities for food. It was mid-afternoon, and it smelled like the crew was working on dinner. A big haunch of meat was hanging, and a local woman was filleting pieces from it. The section of animal had a tail as thick as a Burmese python.
Welcome to R’Bak.
Only a few meters farther were the showers, constructed of plastic-coated tarps and wooden frames. The plumbing looked weirdly resinous, and the stalls were all empty.
Finally, he reached his destination. A line of Vietnam-era tents with “Recon Country” spray painted on one. The sound of someone yelling in Russian gave him his final bearing. When he reached the tent, he found Artyom and Lech in a shoving match; they stood inches apart and yelled so intensely that spittle was flying.
“What in the cursed afterlife is going on here?” he yelled in Ktoran. While they probably didn’t understood all of it, his command voice was sufficient to be recognized by the noncoms. All four of his crew came to attention, though Artyom and Lech glared at each other one more time before casting their eyes at him. Slowly, they all realized who he was.
“They cut your hair,” Taiki said and smiled. “You look like an officer now.”
“Murphy insisted,” Vat said. He’d let it go way past his shoulders and the high-and-tight cut felt as strange as the bars.
“Officer,” Artyom snorted. “Naturally.”
“I was this rank in the army,” Vat pointed out. “At ease, you idiots.” They smirked and relaxed. Based on the pitiful attempt of at-attention from Artyom and Lech, it was probably just as well Murphy didn’t hold a lot of stock in proper military decorum, outside of haircuts. “Murphy gave me my commission back. I left the Army five years ago. I guess I’m back in it now.” He repeated it in Japanese, then Russian. Lech was passable in Russian, so he nodded, understanding.
“Seems like we never left,” Lech said. Artyom nodded, whatever he’d been arguing about with the Polish man seemed forgotten. Judging by the ration packs and dice scattered on the floor, Vat could guess what was going on.
“When they brought us all down, we knew you must be involved,” Sam said and grinned. “What kind of an angle are you working?”
“No angle, just working.” They all laughed, but he held up a hand. “Murphy pretty much told me we needed to work, or we’re gone.”
“Gone where? Back to outer space?” Sam asked.
“Think about it,” Vat said. They all stared at him, uncomprehending. He mimed opening and closing a door, then holding his breath.
“My God,” Taiki said in Japanese.
“Did he threaten to throw us into space?” Lech demanded.
“Not explicitly,” Vat replied then shrugged. “He didn’t have to. He just said we need to get to work or something might happen to us.”
“Are we to fight?” Artyom asked. Despite his bearish appearance and the well-known Russian temperament for being willing to punch you in the face, he wasn’t a fan of being shot at. He was more of a shoot first, then shoot second kind of guy. Most of them were.
“We’re going to do some recon.”
“So, they shoot at us?” Artyom asked.
“Hopefully, nobody shoots at us, and we don’t have to shoot them. You know the main mission here?” They all nodded, and Vat explained how their gr
oup was tasked with locating unfound caches and making advanced contact with villages that might be sympathetic.
“I understand why you would be good with this mission,” Sam said. “You can speak a dozen languages, and you understand Ktor better than anyone I know, but what about us?” He waved at the four of them and the tent they’d been assigned.
“Well,” he said, delaying a second, “you are here in case someone shoots at me.”
“I knew it,” Artyom said.
They all nodded, and Vat sighed.
* * * * *
Chapter Six
Vat pulled his boots on—Vietnam-era army surplus like everything else he wore—and walked to the door of his tent. As an officer, he was assigned a smallish tent that he only had to share with another guy that was never there. It seemed a luxury until you realized it held his cot, a locker for gear, and a desk, along with the various equipment he needed as a small unit commander. Once everything was factored in, he had less personal space than those in his command.
Pulling aside the flap allowed the early morning light to flood in. The orange-hued sun was already a thumb’s width above the low hills in the distance, and the temperature was climbing fast. He’d been sweating in bed half the night. It only cooled off well after midnight, though the planetary clock didn’t follow the 24-hour cycle he was used to.
After two weeks on the planet, he’d yet to completely adapt to the 18-hour days. Most of the Lost Soldiers stuck to twelve or thirteen hours awake, and sleep for five or six. He’d decided on twelve and six. He always felt a little tired, though maybe it was lessening.
Hot was the norm on most of R’Bak. Unlike Earth, there were no icecaps, so it went from really hot on the equatorial region to only a little hot on the poles. When the second sun approached, the equatorial band would be uninhabitable, although there were rumors that people survived there, even at the height of the Searing, and had for generations.
“Those hidden tribes, or whatever they are, may be the key,” Murphy had told him. “Find them, make allies of them. At least find out how they’ve survived, and you’ll have paid your way.”
“Easier said than done,” he said as he yawned and stretched. A group of indig recruits ran by, following a cadence set by a DI at least twice their age. He grinned. Things could be worse.
He followed his nose toward the chuckwagon. The smell of lemony eggs and the local equivalent of bacon was carried on the wind. He’d never asked where it came from, and, frankly, he didn’t want to know. As he passed between lines of tents, a chuffing sound warned him whinnies were nearby. He made a face and stopped as a team of the big Komodo dragon-looking things moved past with riders on their backs.
“Afternoon, Lieutenant,” the team leader said.
“Captain Moorefield,” Vat said with a nod. The rider and his people grinned at Vat, knowingly.
Vat scowled until they were past. Riding horses had been popular in his circle growing up in Michigan. Everyone who was anyone went out to the stables in the surrounding counties every spring and took riding lessons. He’d resisted it until he was twelve when his aunt insisted. In front of all his friends and the riding instructors, Vat was thrown and landed in a giant heap of horseshit.
He hadn’t liked the great hairy, stinking beasts from the moment he laid eyes on them. The animals likely sensed his disquiet and reciprocated the sentiment. The instructor insisted horses could sense fear. Vat wasn’t afraid of them; he just didn’t like them. Either way, as humiliated as he was, he never went back.
Naturally, his first recon out to meet a band of passing locals was with Captain Moorefield and his team. It didn’t help that Moorefield was incredibly handsome and knew it. The whinnies, for all their resemblance to giant lizards, were a lot like horses. Too much, in Vat’s opinion. He’d been distracted and barely managed his beast, falling off not once but twice.
The boys didn’t care. Taiki had even less experience riding and still took to it right away. Sam had ridden as a kid and loved the lizards. Artyom and Lech managed well enough. Vat was in the unenviable position of being in command of his unit and simultaneously the worst rider.
“I’d happily take Private Komatsu off your hands,” Moorefield said afterward.
“Leave my team alone, Captain,” Vat growled as he limped away. His ass had hurt for days. His ego still ached.
Once Moorefield and his patrol had passed, Vat continued to the chuckwagon. Fifty or so Lost Soldiers and local volunteers were in clusters around it eating, talking, and joking. He found the boys sitting together, as usual. Today they were all making eyes at a pair of local women who were trying to ignore the attention, though only halfheartedly.
“You guys having fun?” he asked. All four heads turned toward him, grinning. Their Ktoran had improved quickly over the last few weeks of work. Having so many locals around helped, of course.
“These Ktor women is pretty,” Artyom said, gesturing with his head toward the pair. “They are fun to lie with, too.”
“They are,” Lech agreed. Taiki shrugged and Sam looked a little embarrassed. Artyom saw Vat was looking at the girls, too, and elbowed Lech. They nodded knowingly.
Vat ignored the boys’ interplay; he was listening carefully to the two women talking. They were probably sure he couldn’t hear them over all the dozens of conversations ten meters away. Along with his natural ability to quickly learn languages, Vat had also developed the handy trait of filtering out any noises he didn’t want to hear. In essence, he heard the women as well as if he was sitting at the same table.
“The outworlders are winning,” one woman said.
“They are winning for now,” said the other, holding up a finger as if she were holding off a negative fate. They both spoke with the regional R’Bak dialect of Ktoran common in this area. Vat had, thus far, identified eleven separate flavors of R’Bakuun Ktor, all distinctly different from the version used by the RockHounds, which was also different from the SpinDogs. The more time he spent among these people, the more it reminded him of Russia with its many regional dialects, though still close enough to understand each other. Several waves of Ktoran exodates had melded over millennia to create a hodgepodge both similar to colonial English while also resembling central-use Russian.
“Grandmother will not listen,” the second one continued. “She says even these outworlders will not stand against the satraps, and when the Kulsians arrive, they will be slaughtered.”
My worry exactly, Vat thought. Kulsis might not have super-advanced tech like the Dornaani or the genuine Ktor, but they had resources, numbers, and local reinforcements to back them up. The Lost Soldiers had no reinforcements. The SpinDogs said they would help. Vat wasn’t confident of their assistance if it came down to a real war. The space-based inhabitants had survived there for centuries by running and hiding, not by fighting.
“What is she going to do?” the first girl asked. “Your hetman listens to her.”
Vat had come to understand that the hetmen were tribal leaders in this society. However, they listened to their elder women, the moral compasses for their clans and villages. You didn’t go against one of those matriarchs without taking a chance. She could pull in favors from her supporters and there might be a new hetman. Of course, not every tribe worked the same way. Yeah, it was a lot like rural Russia in the 17th century.
“She says we will go to the Daaj.”
Vat’s ears perked up. He didn’t know what the Daaj was, and he’d never heard the term before. There were hundreds of words and specific terms in regard to their dialects, but this was of a particular category he’d tentatively categorized as non-conforming. They didn’t match the structure of Ktoran.
The first time he’d heard such a word he put it down to an aberration. All languages had them; hell, English was practically made up of them. Words stolen from other languages, words morphed into words that didn’t even sound like their original.
The only problem was that 55 Tauri was an isolated syst
em with zero non-Ktoran contact. Successive exodates had come from the distant home worlds but they were all just more Ktor. If he understood their cultural norms, major deviations in language wouldn’t have been tolerated. So where had it come from?
“The Daaj is just a dream,” the second woman said. “Nobody even knows what it is. Not in my mother’s mother’s mother’s time.”
The first woman shrugged. “You know Ooshwelo; she has always known what she knows.” The other woman grunted and, much to Vat’s frustration, got up and left.
“They are beautiful, yes?” Artyom asked and poked Vat in the ribs.
He looked at the Russian, perplexed until the other waggled his shaggy eyebrows meaningfully. So he thought Vat had been staring at the women because he found them attractive? Really? Vat grunted and closed his eyes a second, committing the women’s facial features to memory. He had to talk to someone later. Without commenting to Artyom, he started eating. The others looked at him, confused, then returned to their banter.
After he’d seen to his men and made sure they weren’t involved in any shenanigans he’d have trouble undoing, Vat made his way to the base coordinator’s tent and looked up the “local liaison specialist.” A pretty-sounding euphemism for HUMINT analyst/wrangler. Vat described the two women he’d seen and listened to.
“Yes, I know them. Miizhaam and Salsaliin. They’re with one of the tribes that supply whinnies to us.”
“Good,” Vat said. “Give me everything you’ve got on their tribe.”
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
It was probably inevitable that he ended up saddled on a whinnie again. Vat was just glad the patrol wasn’t under command of Captain Moorefield. Instead it was a second lieutenant named Roberts. Like Corporal Potts, he was a WWII-era soldier and had been taken at the Battle of the Bulge. Roberts had been with the 2nd Infantry Division while Potts was with the 99th. They didn’t know each other beyond meeting after awakening, and Potts wasn’t interested in a fellow Bulge survivor; he kept to himself.