by Jerry
Laurie and Laurie step out into the gray dust, sending a ripple through the crowd of spacesuits, helmeted heads turning.
Sol staggers back to his chair. “Let’s get prepped, Laurie,” he says, not looking at her.
“Yeah,” she says, not looking at him. “Go time.”
They secure Laurie Three between their chairs with insulation and electrical tape, making sure her head’s as cushioned as possible. Then they strap in for launch. The hopper rumbles through its ignition sequence, testing each engine in turn. On the screen, Sol sees the pickup window flash green. The ship is directly above them, ready to retrieve them and their inconclusive data from the crevasse. He tries to raise Control one last time but gets nothing. So long as they’re in position, the radio interference shouldn’t matter.
Neither of them speaks as the countdown ticks away, and then the roar of the engines is too loud to speak anyway. It shakes them like pennies in a jar, and Sol reaches out an arm to brace Laurie Three. He sees Laurie’s arm reaching from her end, too. Then the hopper shudders up into the sky, shedding gravity all at once. Not all of the Lauries cleared the area, and Sol tries not to imagine them bursting into flame.
They pull away from the Moon’s surface, and on the screen Sol can see the crevasse blooming like a snow-white flower as more and more spacesuited Lauries pour out of it, spilling in all directions across the gray rock. If it doesn’t stop, the entire face of the Moon will be covered in asphyxiating astronauts.
Sol switches the screen to show the waiting ship, hanging in orbit. Are they observing the surface? Are they seeing the bloom? They must be. The thought of trying to explain what’s happened makes Sol want to laugh and die at the same time. He checks their trajectory and sees it’s a little off, but nothing serious.
“You’re not going to tell me which one you are?” he finally asks.
“We figured that would be better for you,” Laurie says dryly. “You don’t have to know who you left behind.”
“I left everyone behind,” Sol says. “Christ, Laurie. I don’t even know who I am now.”
“Join the club.” She leans forward in her seat. “Sol? What’s that?”
Sol zooms the screen and his mouth goes dry. They’re still on course for the ship, but so is someone else. He and Laurie watch speechlessly as a hopper, identical to their own, maneuvers into the dock on a gentle burn, cuts its engines, and slots perfectly into place.
HAIL TO THE VICTORS
Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon
“Ell-tee,” Rhonda called out. “What’s the local time?”
“1130 hours,” Lt. Eddie said, even though he knew the sergeant had the time.
“And the seventeen time?”
“Minus five hours and change,” he said.
“Taking my shirt off,” she said.
Eddie looked up at the sky, opening up in the midday sun and made the decision for Team 84632. “Yeah. Shirts off, guys.”
Rhonda shed her jacket and vest, then pulled off her T-shirt. As the sun began to glow down on them, her dark tan began to turn olive shades. By the time the sunshine gained strength, she was quite green.
“Water up, guys,” Eddie said, as he greened up as well. “300 ml each.”
“Bonus,” Private Jayes said. “What’s the occasion?”
“We haven’t had full sun in three days; it’s going to be hot.”
The five of them sat in the sun, their photo-activated chlorophyll enhanced skins providing their lunch. They were beat and the sun was warm; they didn’t talk. Humans didn’t like being green—this was a necessary technology which could be turned on and off as needed in the face of the collapse of society and supply chains. Meanwhile, Private Robbie had set out clear canisters whose brownish soup began to green up as well. He was halfway through his inspections when a device lying on the ground chirped once.
“Laser fluorescence!” Corporal Gary called out.
“Ours or theirs?”
“Can’t say for sure, Ell-tee.”
“Cover up, guys,” Eddie said, reaching for his jacket first. “Clean up and be ready to move in five.”
“Raptor aloft!”
Eddie shaded his eyes and looked up, barely able to make out the three notches in each wing on the remote flyer quietly soaring overhead. “It’s a 4500—ours.” He continued to look, then spotted a bright emerald flash. “That was us. Stand down.”
“What if it’s a crib?”
“The day the aliens use our aerial probes,” Eddie said, “I’m quitting and going home.”
A nervous laughter simmered in the team, as there were no ships to take them home. But Eddie couldn’t even remember what home looked or even smelled like.
He came to this world nearly a year-and-a-half ago. Interstellar Expeditionary Force 1 started out as a real army, trying to take back a planet from partial enemy occupation. The alien ships were smaller, but there were ten thousand plus of them scattered across three of six continents. IEF-1 arrived in a fleet of seven capital ships—they had begun the long ten-year journey home soon after the army was deployed on the ground.
Early on the army moved in massive formations. Eddie could remember coming over a hill, a first sergeant leading a squad of twenty men amongst 125,000 troops. The Scalies, Lizards, Gumbies, whatever you wanted to call them, the aliens fielded an army of comparable strength. The Battle of Long Valley would be the largest single engagement of the war.
It began as utter chaos, thousands of rockets and artillery shells flying through the bright blue sky, forty kilometers before the generals wanted to engage, but it didn’t matter. Defensive fire kept nearly every incoming round from landing on both sides. Fifteen minutes later the skies were clear again—neither side felt like wasting resources for no reason. The long march alongside roaring vehicles on a beautiful day seemed unreal to Eddie. With the war switched off for the moment, who could imagine the carnage to come?
Eventually opposing units began bumping into each other and the real battle began. The 7th of the 633rd, Eddie’s unit, finally engaged only 125 meters from an enemy column. He soon got his first look at an alien, albeit a dead one. About man-size and man-shaped—shorter but stockier—its flattened head and snout invited the Lizard moniker and it was brownish in color under its removable armored carapace. But in the bright sunshine, they watched it slowly turn green for a while, before it finally faded to a dead brownish gray.
The human army learned a lot from the aliens.
They were down to five now. Lt. Eddie wasn’t really a lieutenant, he’d last officially been a first sergeant, but Team 84632 needed an officer, and with Lt. Allen and 2nd Lt. Brace dead, along with Master Sgt. Hayden, well . . . someone had to lead. They hadn’t heard from Battalion in a long time.
“What’s the chatter saying?” Eddie asked Private Jayes. The young man had been with the team twenty-two weeks and his name was Jesus Martinez, not Jayes. But with so few, Eddie had dropped last names. Over time Jesus became J-S and then Jayes. They were losing their identities the longer they stayed in the field.
Meanwhile Jayes had been toying with the radio scanner—by now everyone was cross-trained on all the gear, but Jayes tended to keep the radio—he shook his head.
“Nothing?” Eddie asked.
“No . . . not really nothing, sir,” Jayes said slowly. “There’s the usual murmur in the background . . . can’t really get a lock.”
“Close?”
“Can’t say. Scalies are jamming some of the bands.”
“Any worse than it was, say two hours ago?”
“No sir.”
“All right. Robbie, do we have any of your goop to eat yet? Before we saddle up.”
“It’s gonna taste a little raw, sir.”
“As long as it doesn’t use our supplies, it’s better than nothing. I haven’t seen anything to scavenge in . . .” Eddie brought himself up short. He promised himself he wouldn’t gripe in front of the troops.
“Uh, give me twenty minutes, Ell-tee,” Robb
ie said. “We’ll fix it up; it’ll almost taste good.”
For reasons no one understood, the aliens fired their artillery exactly every seventeen hours. At first it seemed absurd to be so predictable, but the aliens were crafty adversaries. They avoided counter-battery fire by using remote automated artillery pieces. And the seventeen hour schedule kept the humans constantly on the move.
Eddie never knew when they might’ve been tagged last by the enemy, so he ordered the team to move out with half-an-hour to go. Today they weren’t attacked and never heard any distant artillery exchange. The seventeens were getting more and more infrequent in their area. He could only hope it meant the war was winding down.
“Are you getting anything on tactical?” Eddie asked. He didn’t have a good feeling about moving into this sector. He’d felt crosshairs burning the back of his neck all morning.
Cpl. Gary integrated the scans from across the unit. “No, sir. Not distinct. But something’s close . . .”
Eddie finally gave the hand signal to move out and just like that they were in a fight which lasted all of thirty seconds, but seemed longer. One moment they were gearing up—then Eddie heard a sizzling snick go by.
“Sniper round?” Sgt. Rhonda asked. They all searched; no one was hit. Except . . .
“Son of a bitch,” Pvt. Jayes hissed under his breath as he spotted the burning hole in the side of the radio case. He whipped out an ugly assault knife and began to dig the hot round out of the soft armor before it burned through and did real damage.
“Shield him!” Eddie ordered, as he ran his scanner across the hill. Gary and Robbie moved to kneel over Jayes. “Free fire.” He hoped someone would find something: he couldn’t see the sniper.
They heard two more rounds fire in the distance, but couldn’t immediately locate their origin. Sgt. Rhonda swung the heavy auto-stabilized gun from side to side until its threat finders finally located optical-grade glass in the distance.
“Glass,” she reported as the targeting locked and a high power explosive round streaked off into the rocks. A burst of brownish mist showed it’d found its victim. “One kill!”
“Radio’s clear,” Jayes said, tossing away the enemy bullet and slapping a soft armor patch onto the hole.
“Into the rocks,” Eddie ordered. “And Robbie—you’re bleeding.”
“Movement,” Rhonda and Gary said simultaneously and two more shots were fired outbound. The team took cover and waited. Pvt. Robbie pulled a quick patch out of the medkit and covered the bullet hole in his arm. He didn’t even remember getting hit. It had to be one of the alien’s sneaky rounds, silenced but still deadly.
“Anything?” Eddie asked.
“I recorded two splatters,” Rhonda said. “I say we have two kills.”
“Any more bad guys?”
“No,” Gary said, carefully swinging a scanner above his head.
Eddie moved the team up the slope. High ground—it’s always high ground for a killing field, he thought grimly. In two minutes they’d found the sniper and its spotter—or what was left of them. Sgt. Rhonda and Pvt. Jayes ran a deep scan on the bodies, but found nothing of interest. Cpl. Gary had Pvt. Robbie sit down and get a quick field dressing for his wound.
“How’s the arm?”
“Fine, sir,” Robbie said.
“Pretty clean wound, Ell-tee,” Gary said, finishing up. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“All right. Destroy this gear. Put a delayed grenade on each of the bodies,” Eddie said. “Micronukes—three hours.”
“That’ll leave just one,” Sgt. Rhonda said.
“I know,” Eddie replied. “But I’m not risking moving either body.”
“If we nuke just the sniper . . . ,” Rhonda tried again.
“All right. Use one, save two for the future.” Eddie didn’t want to argue with the best soldier in the unit.
“Three hours it is,” Rhonda said. She pulled a nuclear grenade from her pack and placed it next to the sniper, then very carefully began to set the detonator. “Live nuke,” she said quietly and backed away.
During the night the sky lit up brighter than day. The team looked up reflexively, then each turned away as if they were really more interested in the stark shadows cast upon the rubble. With his eyes closed, Eddie could hear Sgt. Rhonda sigh loudly and Pvt. Robbie begin to unpack the pills. A scanner beeped as the initial burst of radiation from the nuke saturated their camp.
“Alien nuke signature.”
“What’s the range?”
“Twenty klicks.”
“Not close then. We’re not the target,” Eddie said, even as he considered that the team who’d sent aloft the 4500 probably was gone. “Get some sleep everyone.”
The maps said it was still five hundred kilometers to the coast. Team 84632 had fled the eastern part of the continent after a hellish nuclear exchange had left the major army bases radioactive blackened cinders. They’d been on the move for six months, crossing the mountains in winter, staying in loose contact with elements of the alien army the whole time.
With IEF-1 broken down into small mobile teams, the aliens couldn’t destroy the remains of the human army in one blow, even with their high tech weapons. Unfortunately, the aliens soon adopted similar tactics. It was as much a battle of attrition on the run, as once men had been slaughtered locked in trench warfare.
But they were on the move. With nothing behind them to the east, the fact they still were heading west had to mean progress. Eddie didn’t know what they’d find on the west coast. Once there’d been an alien base to the north, which he’d like to avoid, so they angled slightly southward. But then what? Try to get a boat and cross the ocean? Hope the sea life wasn’t poisoned and they could head south down the coast and hold this territory? He assumed for months it was a moot point, that they’d never get there. Now he tried not to worry about it at all.
The days came in two flavors. Either they hunkered down in any of the myriad cracks and craters in the tortured ground, avoiding contact with the enemy and trying to stay out of the rain of fire and death from the sky. Or they humped forward over kilometer after kilometer of dreary, torn up destruction, seeing nothing and no one, trying to keep after the enemy.
We hit them, they hit us. Eddie might’ve sighed from weariness, but no one made any random noises when they were on the march. At least we’ve got them on the run. That was the most amazing part of the war. The battlefield was too fragmented and communication nearly non-existent, but somehow it seemed to him like they were winning. As long as we can keep up the battle.
It began to rain.
“Pvt. Robbie—talk to me.”
“Rain is real mild, lieutenant. We’re already taking pills—should be fine.”
“Is it potable?” Eddie waited patiently for an answer as Robbie ran the test.
“Sure, Ell-tee. Needs a blue and a gray filter, but yeah, you can drink it.”
“Water collection,” Eddie announced and silently the team began to set up several plastic sheets.
He gave it half-an-hour before getting them on the move again. They crossed through an opening in a rubble wall into clearer terrain. Ahead Eddie could spot several corpses—both human and alien—lying in the open. They’d been partly exposed to the air for a long time, leaving eroding skeletons. But the human remains weren’t from Team 84632, which had never passed this way before, so Eddie felt no need to stop and bury them. Odds were both the human and alien remains had been booby-trapped, leaving them no incentive to investigate either. Otherwise it was just another old battle site and Eddie felt no danger. He motioned to go around and give the bodies a wide berth.
They passed through the clearing without incident and were back working slowly through rubble piles. Robbie, on point, suddenly raised a fist and the team knelt as one. Eddie looked around. They were in the remains of a town. He had seen the name on the map, but ignored it, treating it only as map co-ordinates. Now he worried about the columns and pillars. It was thirty-
five meters to the top of the next rise. Would it be safety? Or the trap?
That sniper and its spotter had to be attached to an alien unit, didn’t it? Eddie’s neck hairs began to irritate him again. Cpl. Gary and Pvt. Jayes ran the scanners. Gary motioned with a finger towards the left; that meant the contact was to the right. Eddie clenched his teeth and a tiny pip sounded in everyone’s earpiece. The team began to slowly expand forward, left and right.
Ten meters away one lonely pillar stood as the remnant of a wall. Behind it were more columns and piles of rubble. Eddie swung to the left, only to find his leveled weapon facing another human wielding the same weapon his way. To their credit, neither man pulled the trigger. After a few seconds the newcomer finally spoke.
“I don’t know your move, trooper, but I’m about to shoulder arms—you game?”
“Sure,” Eddie said. “On three?”
“One-two-three . . . There, that’s better.”
“More friendly at any rate,” Eddie said, straightening up. “What Team are you?”
“What’s yours?”
“Trusting, aren’t we? But I asked you first.”
“So you did. Team 55329.”
“84632. Lt. Eddie at your service.”
“Lieutenant, eh?”
“Battlefield commission, I suppose. Someone had to take the job.”
“Lt. Coker. And I’m the same. What’re your dates?”
“583 days in-service, 477 in-combat.”
“That trumps me, Lt. Eddie. You’re in charge.”
“In charge? What—are we merging?”
“I’ve only got three players, lieutenant. We found you . . .” Coker stopped when Eddie shook his head. Looking down, Coker saw three red laser dots converged on his chest where he’d left his soft armor vest open. “Uh, we found each other. What’s the point in splitting up?”
“None, I guess. We’re eight then.” Eddie extended a hand. “Welcome aboard.”
The red dots disappeared as Coker shook the hand, but held on to it. “Glad to be aboard, Captain Eddie.”
Eddie almost protested, but realized it was the smart move. They had no reason to have two lieutenants. Coker had declared for a clear chain of command and he couldn’t argue with him.