by David Poyer
The State rep shook her head. “No, sir. Actually, it’s for Ms. Titus.”
“All right, what?” Blair snapped.
A slow smile curled the woman’s lips. “Actually, I have some really good news for you, Blair.”
5
Camp Pendleton, California
THE rifle squad’s been split into fire teams. Team One crouches in a wrecked basement into which an apartment building has collapsed, leaving shattered beams of reinforced concrete tumbled like dead bones. A fire crackles somewhere, and the air, even down here, is hazy with smoke and rubble dust.
Hector Ramos crouches with them, peering intently into what to a merely human eye would be complete darkness. But his goggles give him vision without light, and data to inform his actions—though there isn’t much just now, and he has to strain to understand what’s streaming from the sensors the team set up outside, and from the single remaining quadcopter buzzing faintly far above.
Sergeant Hector Ramos is twenty years old. An E-5, even though he’s been in the Corps for only two years. War speeds up promotion. He was slight when he joined but has put on twenty pounds since. His black hair is buzzcut. He wears a chin tuft and an eagle, globe, and anchor tattoo. He joined to avoid being deported, but he’s a citizen now. The backs of his hands are deeply scarred from the Kill Room of Uncle Seth’s Poultry Processing Plant #14, where he worked before being “volunteered” for the Corps.
The burns on them, though, are from battle. Ninth MEB was the spearhead for the seizure of Itbayat Island, the first bite off the People’s Empire. Ramos holds a Purple Heart, the Combat Action Ribbon, and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal for that battle.
This morning the platoon hit the beach half a mile back, following a wave of cruise missile and air attacks. Far above, armed drones surveyed the surf-line and the dunes. When their operators detected an enemy, fire lanced downward, detonating either shrapnel or a shaped charge, depending on the target.
At last, with attack helicopters sealing off the flanks and inland approaches, the amtracs stormed ashore.
But just now things aren’t going so well. The marines have penetrated the wrecked city, but an enemy force has circled behind the lead platoon, cutting them off. The fire team leader, a rookie corporal, doesn’t seem to have a clue. Ramos explains again, sketching on his tablet. The Glasses of his squad gleam faintly, imaging the tactical situation as he outlines it. But he doesn’t tell them what to do. That’s up to the fire team leader. Who so far is showing zero leadership.
The marines wear “jelly” body armor with reactive inserts. Over that go the baggy new Cameleons, digital utility uniforms that change color and reflectivity according to the background. Each man or woman carries a chip under the skin of his or her upper back. The chips carry their medical history and individual ID. Their Lightweight Integrated Combat Helmets have night vision and a BattleGlass interface that feeds them ranges and threat evaluations wherever they look, as well as passing commands from Higher. The Ka-band link in the helmets connects them to the intraplatoon net. They grip weapons strange to Hector, who joined up before the tide of new equipment arrived.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the Pig. Hector trained on the black 7.62 machine gun as a private, and fought with it as a gunner. But now it has a new optic and an autofire attachment, so a gunner can leave it to scan and interdict a sector on its own. The squad also has a recoilless rifle. The “Goose” fires antipersonnel, antitank, illumination, and smoke to an effective range of nearly a mile. Instead of the old 5.56, each rifleman carries an experimental shoulder weapon. It pings ranges with a laser, then sets its high-explosive projectile to detonate above the target. It has buckshot and flash-bang rounds for close-in work as well.
They also carry pistols in leg holsters, a rigger belt, a multitool, grenades, water-purification tablets, and LED flashlights. In their assault packs are a CamelBak with a hose, a 500ml intravenous bag with starter kit, MREs, poncho and liner, spare batteries, and a personal hygiene kit. In their main packs are a sleeping bag, undershirts, socks, more MREs, a sleeping pad, and a combat lifesaving kit. All in all, each man or woman carries 130 pounds of clothing, gear, weapons, food, water, and ammo.
Hector himself isn’t part of the squad. He’d rather have just stayed on the Pig, but the Corps hasn’t given him a choice. There are all too few veterans, and though he didn’t exactly come out of Itbayat as a hero, he has the Heart and the burns to show he’s been in combat.
Okay, gotta do something here. But the fire team leader’s still staring into her Glasses, frozen. Hector tongues his Talk button. “Enough fucking thinking. What you gonna do?”
“Well, I’m not quite sure.…”
“Can’t fucking sit here, Corporal. You’re gonna get smoke checked. Keep ahead of the enemy. Disrupt his decision cycle. And remember to sweep for snipers. Urban terrain like this, Charlie Sierra can be anywhere.” He gives her another couple of seconds, then sighs. “Remember, you got Chad here. Is this a mission for him?”
Beside them, crouched like them, yet profoundly unlike the other troops, a figure slowly gets to “hands” and “knees.”
The Combat Humanoid Autonomous Device is a powered skeleton of carbon fiber and aluminum, programmed to respond to voice commands. It usually just follows them, hauling spare ammo, water, batteries, and chow. But it carries a rifle, too, and can acquire a target. Usually it requires verbal authorization to fire, but like the machine gun, it also has an autonomous mode, in case it has to cover a retreat. Along with a self-destruct charge, so the enemy can’t get their hands on it.
Hector’s wary of the thing. It seems both dumb and ominous, and his previous experiences with machines haven’t been good. A robot cart went haywire during the Itbayat assault and raced off downhill, taking their ammo with it. But it’s been assigned to them tonight, so they’re pretty much stuck with it.
Still no action from the corporal. He leans in and hisses in her ear. “Let’s fucking act, bitch!”
“Uh, Chad. I need you to go out the exit to your left. Find cover out there and lay down fire on a bearing of…” She hesitates. Hector was trying to visualize it too, but he’s never been good with numbers.
“Incomplete command,” Chad hisses, sibilant, pitched low.
In Hector’s earbuds the computerized purr of Iron Dream, the seduction-voiced tactical adviser the troops call Wet Dream, prompts, “Two-seven-zero to zero-zero-zero.”
The fire team leader says, “Chad. Find cover out there and lay down aimed fire on sector between bearings of two-seven-zero to zero-zero-zero.”
Chad hisses, “Exit cover. Find new cover. Lay down. Aimed fire on sector between bearings of two-seven-zero to zero-zero-zero.”
She mutters, “Close enough. Confirm.” The other squad members wriggle aside, and the machine creeps between them, motors whirring. It orients to the chink of light that marks the exit, lowers itself to its “elbows,” and crawls through, bent awkwardly on all fours like a metallic reptile.
Thirty seconds later a thud marks the first departing round from Chad’s rifle, followed almost immediately by an explosive crack. Hector clicks to its video feed. Chad’s point of view, in infrared because it’s night. It’s in position, covering the approach, but the black cloud of high explosive it’s just fired is too close amid the tumbled rubble of the wrecked city.
“Chad: Lengthen your range,” the fire team leader orders. Good, Hector thinks. “Set your elevation to three hundred meters.”
The next shot bursts above and behind a wrecked bus some three hundred meters off. “Good boy,” she mutters. Hector blinks; why praise a machine? But when he turns back to the leader, she’s staring into her Glasses again.
“Okay, what next?”
“I’m … not sure.”
“You’re taking too long. They’re gonna target you. Move ’em out, goddamn it!”
She flinches. She snaps terse orders and flicks a go-ahead signal. As they crawl past, Ramos e
xamines each face. They’re newbies, draftees, and even after war-accelerated boot camp and infantry school, unsure of themselves. Frightened, though they haven’t seen a single casualty yet.
They haven’t seen war yet.
Boys trodden into bloody pink paste by amtrac treads …
He closes his eyes. Not wanting to go back.
But the ground gives way beneath him
fuck it fuck it fuck it I can’t stop it
Figures running, staggering, fitfully illuminated by explosion-flashes.
The wreck of a powered mule. Hundreds of cartridges lie scattered across the dirt. The driver’s been blown into shreds of meat. Strips of flesh hang, swaying in the wind.
Lasers search the dark, searing retinas to blindness.
A flash illuminates a mashed-in, concave mass of blood and bone that somehow still breathes. Bubbles burst and slide. Until Hector rams the butt of the Pig down, caving in the Chinese’s skull.
His assistant gunner lies half in, half out of the caved-in fighting hole, chin back at an unnatural angle. In the light of the falling flares a scarlet well pulses at his throat, in which is wedged something small and black with stubby wings.
A helmetless head, dark braids unraveled. Olive skin and a hawklike nose. One leg lies several yards away. She’s cold. Bled out.
The fire team leader touches his hand, and he realizes he’s groaning aloud. They’re waiting at the exit for him. Sweat pulses over his cheeks. He shakes her hand off. “Forget about me. Get the fuck out of this hole! Take some action, or your people’re gonna die here!”
She suddenly shakes herself. Maybe seeing him like this shocks her. She pushes her team out of the hole, then follows them. Rifles thud.
When he scrambles out from cover the high-pitched clatter of Chinese fire echoes off wrecked buildings that stretch from here to the smoky horizon. Overhead the black sky is solid smoke. Even in the infrared spectrum the stars are invisible. But small objects are darting overhead, and he cowers instinctively as a rabbit at a hawk-shadow. Bullets whine past, cracking into concrete. Strangely, though, the fragments don’t sting. He lurches after the team in the stumbling bent-over jog of the battlefield. Then halts as he collides with the robot, which has suddenly jumped to its feet.
The Chad stops dead. Its “head” angles, then slowly tracks around.
A bullet clangs into its “shoulder.” It sways, but stays upright. Its head lifts. A faint red light glows on the back of its metal skull.
“Targeting,” the fire team leader says into the circuit. “Active sniper, fourth floor, top deck, second window from the left. Lasering.”
Another shot, this time full in the chest, hits the robot. It reels, starting to lose gyro control. But again, stays on its feet. Around them, amid broken concrete, steel beams, a toppled and dented bathtub, the team’s firing up at the building. But their projectiles detonate a hundred yards short, bursting in the air. “Shit,” someone mutters over the circuit. “He’s got something that explodes our rounds early.”
“Targeting,” Iron Dream’s dulcet voice confirms. “Acquired. Mark on top. Missile away.”
Faster than the eye can follow, a fiery lance penetrates the roof opposite. White flame blasts out the windows in a glittering hail of glass, succeeded by smoke. Hector’s goggles blank at the flash, then regenerate.
The robot takes one last step and crumples. Its head smacks a chunk of concrete curbing as it goes down, and a piece of plastic sheathing flies off. The red light dies. Motors whine down the scale to silence.
Hector stares at it, unable to move. The fire team leader, who’s started off on foot, signals to one of the riflemen. Who grabs Hector’s arm, tugs him along. The fire team leader grabs the other.
Hector whirls, taking her down to the ground. His knee’s on her chest. He rears back, ready to bring the butt of his weapon down.
Just at that moment, Dream says in all their earbuds, “Attention. Attention. Scenario is terminated. LVT is secured.”
Hector pants, recalled suddenly. The fire team leader’s blinking up, eyes wide behind her goggles. He pats her shoulder. “Uh, sorry about that. Got carried away.”
“Yeah,” she mutters, rubbing her neck. Getting up, she turns away, suspicious of him. As the dirt and crushed concrete beneath them turn a pale washed-out blue.
“Better learn to take it. Gonna be a lot worse than that, where you’re going.”
Unfortunately, one of the men snickers. Hector wheels instantly. “Who the fuck just laughed?”
They all stare back wide-eyed. “Nobody, Sergeant.”
“You sad little motherfuckers. Do you hate the Chinese?”
They stare back, silent. Ramos covers his face with both hands, then flings them away. “I asked, Do you hate the fucking Chinese?”
The fire team leader puts her hand on his arm. “You asked us that this morning, Sergeant. We hate ’em. We told you that then.”
“Yeah, but enough to blow their fucking guts into the dirt? And stamp on them?”
Hector whirls, and slams a helmet with the heel of his hand. “You, you gay-ass little motherfucker, you hate the fucking Chinese?” He punches the next guy’s helmet, the next woman’s, ringing their bells one after the other. “Wise up, people. There won’t be any replays in combat.” He clutches his head as their faces reel around him. Bleckford. Breuer. Titcomb. Conlin. Schultz. Evans. Vincent. Orietta, Whipkey, Hern …
The tumbled masonry around them begins erasing, line by line. “Where we headed, Sergeant?” one of the team mutters. “After training? You know, right?”
Hector shakes his head, turning away. As ever, the grunts are getting the mushroom treatment.
“LVT is secured,” Dream purrs again. “Scenario four is terminated.”
The scene pixilates around them, erasing from their goggles. The Chad vanishes; then, line by line, the computer-generated imagery of the ruined city. Sweating, Hector snatches off his goggles. Revealing pale blue walls and, overhead, the pale blue spotless floor of an immense area that not long before was a DreamWorks soundstage.
“Live Virtual Training session complete,” the soft voice coos in his earbuds. “Fifteen-minute break. After which training will resume.”
* * *
THAT night, lying on his bunk in his hooch. Hector shared it with another drill sergeant, Ahoh. Who, at that moment, was reclining on a weight bench, doing curls. Ahoh was from Minnesota, second-generation Somali. Despite his name, which might normally subject him to scatological ragging, no one joked about him. Erotic tattoos covered most of his body, and he took off his shirt at every opportunity to show them off.
Like now, as he finished his curls nearly naked in boxer shorts and boots. His body gleamed darkly, coated in sweat. Hector lay back, studying the report the lieutenant had handed him after the day’s training. Another reprimand. Harsh language. Striking a trainee. Second warning.
What the fuck did they want? These kids had no idea. They needed toughening up. He crumpled the paper in his fist, bolted a concussion pill, followed by another deep pull at the can of Upgrade. Energy drink, protein, and rumor said some kind of meth. The supply sergeant let the trainers have all they wanted, since they were running sims fourteen hours a day. “It’s fucking hopeless,” he muttered.
“You talkin’ to me?” muttered Ahoh. The weights clanked as he set them down on concrete. “Or to yourself, again?”
“These fetuses they’re sending us. They’re gonna shit themselves when their friends die, then die themselves.” He sucked the last drop down and flung the can across the room. It clattered off the metal wall, spun, and joined the others on the concrete-slab deck.
“You got to lay off that macho juice.” Ahoh sneezed, then reached back over his head to pick up the heavy bells. He dropped them to his chest, then lifted, concentrating on his bench press. “They’re makin’ you even more nutzoid than you already is.”
“Fuck you, A Man.”
“Beyond your grade, Ra
y-mose. Way beyond your grade.” Ahoh blitzed out ten quick ones, fast as he could, then racked the weight and flexed, admiring his biceps. Grunted, “One,” and started the next set. “Hey, wasn’t chu due leave?”
“Not for a month.”
“How long?”
“A week.”
“Goin’ home?”
“Think so.”
“I’ll get Samantha to move in here. While you’re gone.”
“No you don’t. Keep that fucking skeeze-whore out of my fart sack.”
“Hey, no sweat, Chicken Man. What you don’t know don’t hurt you.” Ahoh chuckled. His gaze traced the curved corrugated metal overhead as his arms pumped iron.
Hector picked up a computer game, but it didn’t interest him. Who gave a fuck how fast he could build villages into cities? He liked first-person shooters, but Corps had banned them. Something about interfering with training.
He reached down for the report chit, smoothed it out on a knee, and read it again. Typically effective in the trainer role, but prone to outbursts of anger. Sometimes less than attentive to duty. Is only being retained due to his combat experience and the needs of the Service.
“I told you not to call me that,” he muttered.
Ahoh gulped air between reps. “What’d ya say?”
“I said, don’t call me that.”
“Hey, mean nothin’ by it. You’re the one told me where you used to work … Chicken Man.”
Hector twisted suddenly, grabbed the weight, and leaned on it. Taken by surprise, Ahoh pushed back only when the bar got within an inch of his throat. Hector threw himself atop the other sergeant. Hung there, face inches above Ahoh’s, which was darkening as he fought the combined weight of barbells and hoochmate. “I told you,” Hector said softly.
“Didn’t … oof. Get out of my face.”
“You like four hundred pounds on your fucking throat … asshole?”
Ahoh squinted. Sucked air.
With a sudden thrust he kneed Hector in the groin and rotated the weight, throwing it and Hector off the bench to one side. Then landed on top of a gasping, doubled Ramos, who still managed to get in a solid punch. They wrestled on the cold concrete, wheezing and grunting, trying for holds.