Tobias had to smile. Colin sounded a different person when he talked about guns. Or ... or about something he was genuinely interested in. Tobias supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. Colin’s marks at school had been terrible, in everything apart from PE and the CCF. No wonder he knew so much about guns. He could probably quote chapter and verse from memory.
“I see,” he said, carefully. “Why are they rare?”
“Increased penetrating power,” Colin said. He pulled the handgun free and held it up for inspection. “Standard army-issue body armour could dull the impact, if you shot the wearer from a decent distance. A rifle round ... it would probably go through the armour, depending on various factors. You might not kill the victim, but you’d certainly do a great deal of harm that would require urgent medical attention.”
“Ouch,” Tobias said.
Colin smiled. “That, and you also put a lot of stress on the gun,” he added. “There’s a pretty good chance you’d fuck up your weapon if you used the wrong ammunition.”
He dismantled the gun with practiced ease, then put it back together again. “This is the clip,” he said, pointing to a row of bullets. “It slots into here” - he snapped it into position - “and the gun is now loaded. The safety catch is on, and the gun shouldn’t be able to fire, but I expect you to remember the rules and follow them anyway. Just in case. The gun should never be pointed at anyone unless you intend to kill them.”
Tobias swallowed as the explanation went on and on. How often had he lain awake at night, dreaming of the power to kill Colin? How often had he begged God for superpowers or something, anything, that would make him strong enough to fight without fear? He’d prayed for money and power, enough to hire a mercenary to beat Colin to death ... he swallowed, again, as Colin held out the gun. It felt heavy in his hands, pregnant with possibility ... it was all he could do to step up to the wall and peer towards the targets. The holographic images looked humanoid, without any real details. It was hard to believe they were real targets.
A thought struck him. “What’s to stop the bullet bouncing off the far bulkhead and coming back at us?”
“The bulkhead is designed to prevent it,” Colin said, vaguely. “I’d be a little more concerned if we were firing GPMGs in here.”
He motioned towards the targets. “You’ll see a mark when you hit the target,” he said, calmly. “The range will also point out your mistakes.”
Tobias nodded as he raised the gun, took aim and pulled the trigger. It wasn’t the first time he’d fired a gun, but the bang was louder than he remembered. The holographic image seemed undisturbed. Tobias frowned as he saw a glowing light close to the image. He’d missed by several inches. And yet ...
“I was aiming perfectly,” he said, in protest. “How did I miss?”
“Handguns are not the most accurate weapons in the world,” Colin said, dryly. “It takes time to learn how to fire properly. That’s why most shooters are urged to aim for the target’s centre of mass. Given time, you’ll learn to overcome it and produce some reasonably accurate fire.”
He nodded towards the target. “Try again. Please.”
Tobias nodded and pulled the trigger. It clicked. “What?”
“You have to eject the last cartridge,” Colin pointed out. “Or switch the pistol to auto.”
“I see,” Tobias said. He pointed and fired again. This time, he fired nine shots in quick succession before the pistol ran dry. “I hit him!”
“Two hits out of ten,” Colin said. “You want the good news or the bad news?”
Tobias sighed. “Both.”
“The good news is that, if you hit a human like that, you’d send him to hospital,” Colin said, deadpan. He affected a teacher-like manner. “If there was no hospital within reach, he’d die. Probably. There’s a reasonable chance you’d put a bullet through his heart or his lung, either one of which would prove life-threatening. The bad news ...”
He paused for dramatic effect. “The bad news, I’m afraid, is that you wouldn’t kill a zombie if you hit him like that. He’d just stagger, then keep on coming.”
Tobias shivered. “How do you stop a zombie?”
“It depends,” Colin admitted. He took the gun back, slotted a new clip into place and opened fire. Red marks appeared around the target’s knees, with a single mark between the eyes. “If you’re lucky, the original brain is still partly in control and killing it will take out the body too. If you’re not, you have to make sure the body can’t move again. Take out the knees and the body might collapse, at least for a while. The virus is good at working its way around damage. As long as there’s a critical mass left in the body, it can regenerate and keep coming.”
“Shit,” Tobias said. “How do you stop that?”
“Fire, normally, or grenades,” Colin said. He put the pistol back on the table. “You want to try again?”
Tobias nodded and started again from the beginning. It felt strange, to say the least, to be wielding a pistol. He wondered what he’d have done if, six months ago, Colin had given him the pistol and turned his back. The urge to put a bullet in his back would have been overpowering, muted only by the sense it wouldn’t have worked. Colin could survive anything, while Tobias couldn’t hope to defend himself ... he shook his head. Those days were behind him, behind both of them. He owed it to himself to let the past go.
“Enough for the moment,” Colin said. “You got a little better.”
“A little,” Tobias repeated. He’d hit the target four times. Just four. “I should have done more practicing.”
“Yes,” Colin agreed. “If you book the range when I’m not around, there’ll be someone on duty. Get them to supervise as you practice.”
“Yes, sir,” Tobias said, surprising himself. “I’ll do my best.”
Colin reached into his carryall and produced a flask, which he held out to Tobias. Tobias hesitated, then took a sip. It tasted like a demented cross between medicine and orange juice, as if someone had dissolved soluble painkillers in orange squash. He took another sip, trying not to grimace. He’d expected alcohol, but this was worse. The flavour made his tongue want to crawl up into a ball and die.
He passed the flask back. “What the ... what is that?”
“Panda Orange,” Colin said. “You put a tablet in a flask of water and - hey presto - orange-flavoured water.”
“It’s vile,” Tobias said, with feeling. “Can’t they give you something a little nicer?”
“Yeah,” Colin said. He took a long swig, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Point is, the juice is also purified. The tablet takes out anything that might harm us. There’s no risk of the galloping shits if you put the tablet in the water first, then drink it.”
Tobias grimaced. “Do you have to be so crude?”
Colin surprised him by taking the question seriously. “You know the difference between the very rich and the very poor?”
“They have more money?” Tobias couldn’t remember who’d said that - he’d read it in a book somewhere, years ago - but it was true. “There isn’t much of anything else.”
“No,” Colin said. “The very rich and powerful can afford to pretend the world isn’t a stinking cesspit. They can pretend the garden is full of roses and ignore the thorns. They can tell themselves that things are perfect and, if they’re not, they can just splash around enough money to make them perfect. Ugly mug? Cosmetic surgery. Bad grades? Hire a tutor. No place at university? Endow a research chair or something to encourage the university to make the right decision.”
He shook his head. “The very poor cannot afford such delusions. They cannot afford to hide behind high walls and fancy words for blunt truths. They can’t afford to pretend that things are perfect when they’re not. And that’s true of the military too. I am crude because I cannot let myself pretend things will always go my way.”
“That’s almost profound,” Tobias said. “Who are you and what have you done with Colin?”
C
olin flushed. “I’ve had to grow up a little,” he said. “Either I learn to use my brain or I never get another stripe. I’ll be lucky if I get to keep this one. If they hadn’t wanted a semi-independent platoon ...”
He shook his head. “Do you remember Ajeet?”
Tobias frowned. “Vaguely,” he said, finally. Ajeet had been one of the few coloured students in Birmingham. His father had been a Gurkha or something, from what little Tobias remembered. He hadn’t paid much attention. He’d had too many problems of his own. “What about him?”
“We gave him a hard time,” Colin said. “And it never crossed our minds how difficult it must have been, for him, to come study with us.”
“I suppose,” Tobias said. “And yet, you accepted him when you discovered he was good at football.”
He felt a flash of bitterness. It had been easy for Ajeet, hadn’t it? It was astonishing what people would overlook, if they needed someone. The football team would have thumped anyone who gave Ajeet a hard time, after they discovered his talent. No one had ever defended Tobias that way, no one. Common sense told him Ajeet had had problems too, even after he gained a degree of acceptance, but ... he ground his teeth. It was hard to take someone else’s problems seriously when yours were so bad.
Grow the fuck up, he told himself. Leave it in the past, where it belongs.
“We did,” Colin said, shortly. “Ajeet was human. Kevin is not.”
Tobias was tempted to point out, despite everything, that he’d been treated as less than human for years. And yet ... he told himself, again, to let it go.
“It can’t be easy,” he said, slowly. “Does it work?”
“It’s hard to say,” Colin said. “Kevin is a good bootneck. I have the feeling he had some experience on Vesy, prior to joining the program. There’s no reason to think he’s going to be a problem and I made sure the lads wouldn’t give him a hard time, but ... it just feels odd, as though a penny is waiting to drop. It feels weird.”
“I imagine the first male soldiers who found themselves sharing duties with female soldiers felt the same way,” Tobias said. “At least no one is trying to get into his pants.”
“And you accuse me of being crude.” Colin snickered. “No, I suppose we don’t have that problem. But ... maybe I’m just overthinking it.”
Tobias flushed. He’d walked right into that one. “How different is he? I mean ... does he have issues you don’t understand? A religion? Or food? Or ... or what?”
“I don’t know,” Colin said. “You know, back before the Troubles, there was a policy of embedding Western soldiers with foreign armies to teach their men how to fight?”
“I thought those policies were blamed for a lot of problems,” Tobias said. “Or was that just propaganda?”
“A bit of both,” Colin said. “I took the time to read some of the personal reports and memoirs from that era. Lots of them come from countries that don’t really exist any longer, yet ... most of the reports were written before things really got bad. They said ...”
Tobias frowned. He’d never seen Colin as particularly studious. Six months ago, he hadn’t even been sure Colin could read. “What did they say?”
“Their students were often different, culturally speaking,” Colin said. “They’d do things the embedded officers found horrific or inexplicable. A lot of their conduct simply didn’t make sense. There were moments that, in hindsight, should have been expected ... but weren’t, because the embeds couldn’t wrap their heads around them. They were from different cultures. They didn’t share our cultural assumptions. And the results were decidedly mixed.”
Tobias silently reassessed his estimate of Colin’s intelligence. Given a reason to study - and to learn - it was clear he was very far from stupid. And yet ... Tobias couldn’t imagine what it was like to be an alien amongst humans. Poor Kevin had to be feeling very alone. There were no other Vesy for hundreds of light years, unless there was one on the other ships. It didn’t seem likely. Colin would have been told if there was ... right? Probably. The chance to compare notes with someone undertaking the same task was not to be despised.
He felt an odd spark of sympathy. “And they expect you to handle everything yourself?”
His imagination provided a whole string of possible problems. He didn’t know much about the Vesy, but ... they were egg-layers, weren’t they? Kevin might lay eggs at any moment ... Kevin was a male name, yet who knew if the alien really was male? Or if there was something funny about their biology, something so alien the clues had been missed ... he gritted his teeth. If humans had problems understanding their fellow humans, how could they understand aliens? He remembered some of the history books he’d read, the ones that looked back on the days of the British Empire and the Raj and frowned. He’d never been able to understand their mindset. The imperialists had belonged to a different century.
And yet they were human, he thought. The Vesy are not.
“We can’t afford to bring a xenospecialist with us, not onto the battlefield,” Colin pointed out, grimly. “We have to learn the hard way.”
“They’ve left you holding the bag,” Tobias pointed out. “What a fucking mess.”
“We’ll see,” Colin said. He shrugged. “We could be overthinking it, you know. We might not have any major problems.”
“I hope you’re right,” Tobias said. “If there’s anything I can do to help ...”
“Well, we could use a pair of outside eyes,” Colin said. “Really, though, I don’t think you could do much to help. We have to handle it ourselves.”
“Good luck,” Tobias said. His wristcom bleeped, reminding him that he was expected back in the briefing room in ten minutes. “What happens if the experiment fails?”
“Fucked if I know,” Colin said. “Kevin will go home and ... who knows?”
“We’ll see,” Tobias said. “Thank you for the lesson.”
“Keep practicing,” Colin said. He made a show of looking in all directions, as if he thought someone was sneaking up on them. “We might be boarded tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Tobias said. He’d heard that before. “And we might not be boarded at all.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Captain,” Midshipman David Culver said. “We have completed our download from New Washington.”
Mitch nodded, thoughtfully. “Inform the flag that we are departing as planned,” he said. “Helm, take us into cloak as soon as we enter the ECM haze.”
“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Sam Hinkson said. A low hum echoed through the frigate as she started to move away from the fleet. “Course laid in for Target One.”
“Good,” Mitch said. He felt a thrill of excitement. The moment they crossed the tramline, they would be in enemy territory. “Hold us on course.”
He forced himself to relax as Unicorn picked up speed. The fleet had entered the New Washington system only a day ago, loudly announcing its intention to thrust its way up the chain towards Alien-One. It was impossible to tell if the virus was listening, or even if it cared enough to try, but it could hardly ignore the arrival of a sizable fleet. Any sane foe would be doing everything in its power to put together a blocking force, in hopes of preventing the fleet from grinding its way up the chain into enemy space. Alien-One might have been turned to radioactive ruins a decade ago, but the tramlines there provided access to the rest of enemy space. The virus had to stop them.
That’s what we would do, he thought, grimly. But the virus is inherently unpredictable.
The thought nagged at his mind as his ship entered cloak. The Americans had already deployed a small fleet of decoy drones, intended to suggest the fleet was preparing to thrust up the chain even as it slipped out of New Washington and headed elsewhere. It wasn’t easy to tell if anyone was fooled. New Washington had been settled for over a century and yet there was relatively little activity within the system, nowhere near enough to make life difficult for cloaked recon ships. The virus could have scattered thousands of stealthed sensor pl
atforms across the system, relying on the vastness of space to hide them. Mitch had taken part in an exercise designed to track down and destroy primitive sensor platforms years ago. Hundreds of ships and thousands of starfighters had been devoted to the task, but it had been a complete failure. They’d buzzed within a few thousand kilometres of a couple of sensor platforms and suspected nothing.
He leaned forward as the tramline finally came into view. They’d planned to make transit well away from the system primary, to minimise the chances of being detected. The odds were very low, but if there was any power capable of emplacing sensor platforms right along the tramline it was the virus. Mitch wasn’t blind to the implications of an entire economy devoted to making war, whatever Captain Hammond said. He just refused to let the prospect of being massively out-produced, then out-gunned, intimidate him. They wouldn’t have a hope in hell if they let themselves be hypnotised by the spectre of millions upon millions of battleships bearing down on them.
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