by Dan Davis
“No,” Ram said. “Nothing that can’t wait. You said they did something to me?”
“Listen,” she lowered her voice and leaned in further, eyes glancing around. “You are being lied to.”
A chill struck him, as if his suit cooling system had been cranked up to high.
“I’m what?”
“Rama Seti,” a voice called out from across the room. It was Gunnery Sergeant Wu, pushing his way through the masses over to Ram’s table. “Captain Cassidy wants to see you, sir. Why are you ignoring him?”
Ram glanced at Sifa. “I got the message about two seconds ago.”
“Well, then, you need to get to the command center, immediately, sir.”
“I’m having a conversation with my friend and it’s important that—”
“Listen,” Gunnery Sergeant Wu said, then leaned in, lowering his voice. “I did what you asked, sir, and I passed on your requisition request for your battle rifle and sidearm. If you don’t go and speak to the Captain right now then he certainly will not issue it to you.”
Ram nodded. He needed the massive firepower of the XRS-Handspear if he was going to mount a rescue attempt for Milena and the others.
“Alright. Sifa, I want to hear what you have to say more than anything but I have to go get my gun.”
“I understand.” She looked upset or nervous, perhaps. Not her old self. Not at all. “We can speak at any time.”
Ram hesitated but Gunny Wu stood right there and, for whatever reason, Sifa was unwilling to say more. He winked at her and moved off with Wu, heading for the door.
Before Ram left him, the Gunnery Sergeant had one more piece of advice. “Sir, you know me and the guys love you for what you did. And we know you saved the Spaz squad from letting the wheelers in the front door. But you have to do whatever the Captain says. And be honest with him. He’ll know if you’re lying, believe me.”
“What the hell would I have to lie about?” Ram asked, grinning as he turned away.
But he was nervous as he headed to the outpost CIC. The Captain was a tough bastard and he had as much authority as a man could have.
All I want is my weapon. Tell him whatever he wants to hear and get out of there.
The Command Center was a relatively grand name for a relatively unassuming, ramshackle little box of a room in the southwest corner of the outpost. The communications and intelligence systems were all routed through there and the various teams of Marines and civilians were organized and coordinated by the Company command team and the UNOP civilian leaders’ staff. Screens were pasted over every vertical surface and images, text and symbols played across all of them.
After such a long time being a giant person, wherever Ram went, people noticed him. More than noticed him, they tended to stare or say hello or jump out of his way. And walking into the CIC, heads turned to him and the most senior officer on the planet looked up and waved him over.
Captain Cassidy had a standing desk and he held up a hand to silence the Sergeant Major he was speaking to.
“You sent for me, Captain Cassidy?” Ram asked.
Sergeant Major Gruger shuddered with anger. “Took your damned time about it, didn’t you?”
“I came almost right away.”
“Almost!” the Sergeant Major’s lip curled with contempt. “Almost, he says. Disgraceful.”
“What’s his problem?” Ram asked the Captain, jerking his thumb at the Sergeant.
The NCO spluttered but the Captain silenced him. “Thank you, Sergeant Major, that will be all.”
With a fraction of a second hesitation, the Sergeant Major saluted smartly. “Sir!” He turned about and marched off, with only a little less formality than a parade ground display.
“You don’t want to make an enemy of that man,” Captain Cassidy said. “He’s the most dangerous bastard on the planet.”
“Him?” Ram said. “He seems like an uptight jerk.”
“It’s all for show,” Cassidy said. “He terrorizes the men. He keeps the other sergeants in line. Even my lieutenants are scared of him. Especially them, in fact.”
“Why the hell do you keep him around?”
“Are you joking? That’s exactly what I need. That’s his job. But he already hates you, so don’t push him.”
“Why does he hate me?”
The Captain paused. “He thinks you were gifted too much. You have unearned knowledge and unearned position.”
“Oh yeah? Do you think I should tell him that I don’t know shit and that I’m assigned to Spaz Squad?”
Cassidy nodded. “Your request for your weapon came through from Sergeant Wu. Now, making friends with the quartermaster is a smart move, I’ll give you that. But I cannot issue you a firearm.”
Ram felt a surge of anger, an instant desire for violence. But it fell away as quickly as it had risen up. “Can I ask why?”
“You know why. You are planning to run off after your girlfriend.”
Ram forced himself to laugh. “I’m not. I know there’s no point. And she’s not my girlfriend. She’s a friend and colleague, that’s all.”
“You know that she is very likely dead, don’t you?” The Captain stared into Ram’s eyes. “Come on, Seti, I want to hear you say it.”
“Yes. I know she’s probably dead.”
“And you know that you have zero chance of rescuing her.”
“Exactly. I do know that. Having a large caliber battle rifle will not help me against dozens or maybe hundreds of wheelers that have at least two transport vehicles and who knows what other resources. I know that, without communications systems to speak to the Victory and to the satellite network, there’s no way to be certain where they took her and the others. So, if I know all that and I tell you I’m not going, you have no reason not to issue me my firearms. Right?”
Cassidy seemed amused. “I don’t trust you. I don’t know you. You can fight, I don’t doubt it. I heard what you did with that sword of yours during the attack and I admit that you are certainly an asset.”
“Oh yeah? So what was with chewing me out during that speech earlier?”
“Don’t take it personally, son. A lot of the guys and gals round here think the sun shines out of your ass. I don’t want them to have anything to do with you, so I have to give the impression I have nothing but contempt for you. With Sergeant Major Gruger, it is genuine contempt but all I’m doing is redressing the balance. My people will follow me more than they will follow you.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment. You think I’m a danger to unit cohesion.”
“They kept telling me you were a smart guy.”
“So, if I’m an asset, why can’t you let me help to defend this place? These people? And why am I assigned to the Spaz Squad? You think I’m Retard Team material, is that it?”
The Captain scowled. “Don’t use those terms. Whatever else those people might have done, they’re still Marines and they are under my command. I won’t have them insulted in my presence. And you being assigned to them means you should not face any combat unless it is strictly necessary. As you saw during the attack, I sent you and them to oversee the evacuation. It was my tactical failure that meant they were the unit holding back the final thrust. I was not expecting two armored fighting vehicles to slow down my flanking attack. If you had not stepped up and blocked the entrance with wheeler bodies, we would not have had time to drive them away.”
“And that crazy shuttle pilot who took out the tanks, right? Those guys knocked out those wheeler Wildcats.”
The Captain’s face darkened. “True. And yet they took that weapon with them when they left us here. We unpacked antipersonnel autoturrets and support drones and I ordered the ETATs to be armed with mounted support weapons but they would have been no use against those Wildcats. That cannon was supposed to be removed from the shuttle and left on the surface for us to mount on the outpost but they took it away with them. Still, I admit it was fine shooting. I hope that they made it to the Victory.”
“No offense, sir, but what’s the delay with repairing the antenna?”
Cassidy sighed. “The bastard wheelers ripped the shit out of it before they set off their incendiary device. The techs have had to print every component and rebuild from scratch, it’s taking them forever but they’ve almost got it. We had connection to a satellite as it passed over today but something broke. You got to hand it to those sons of bitches, they really screwed us.”
“I thought they were supposed to be tactically simplistic. That’s what you said in your briefing during the descent to the—”
“I know what I said. It was accurate based on the data from the first attack.” Cassidy glanced around the room before looking back up at Ram. “What did you make of the second attack? Tactically?”
Ram was surprised to be asked but he assumed it was a test of some kind. “They seemed slow. Not individually but collectively, they had more vehicles than us, those Wildcats were heavily armed and armored and the wheelers can move faster than us but they advanced slowly. Not sure why. Wasn’t as though they were scared. I thought it was like you suggested in the briefing, maybe they were thinking slowly, perhaps they were used to a slower pace of combat than we are, from a doctrine point of view. But after they got away with our people and destroyed the comms room I started to think maybe they just had some very specific mission goals. Their first attack was a probe. Then when they came back in force, they took their time. They amassed forces in the hills for what, forty hours or more? And when they attacked, they just took their time. When the shuttle landed, they brought up their mortars or whatever they were and started shelling us, tried to pin us down, maybe, while they brought their vehicles up to destroy the shuttle.”
“Destroy?”
“Um, I guess they didn’t shell the Lepus, did they. I assumed they didn’t have the range. Do you think they were trying to capture the shuttle? Makes sense. Anyway, so they sent in their units carefully and only when we were committed did they flank us, destroy the comms, snatch our people and pull out. We killed a lot of them but we don’t know what kind of impact that will make on their tactical ability. There might be hundreds more. Thousands, right? Or we might have crippled them.”
“What do you think?”
“I think if they could have finished us off, they would have. They withdrew because you were hammering them.”
“What does that say about how they think?”
“That they’re not tactically naive after all. Just methodical. Conservative.”
Cassidy nodded slowly.
“And so, probably,” Ram continued, “all we need to do is wait for our reinforcements to arrive on Admiral Howe’s Stalwart Sentinel. Assuming that the Victory can hold off the enemy ship for long enough. Sit tight, keep improving the defenses, keep sending out patrols and get the radio fixed and when we have orbital and aerial superiority we can take the fight to them. Finish them off, the little bastards.”
Cassidy grinned.
“So,” Ram asked. “How did I do?”
“I’ve heard worse,” Cassidy said, shrugging. “But I still can’t give you those firearms.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You are undisciplined. Unstable. You can’t control yourself.”
Ram was confused. “I don’t know where you get that idea.” He assumed Cassidy was referring to Ram’s original life, which was sedentary, and body, which was morbidly obese. “Look, okay, listen, you think I’m going to go running off into the hills. But I know I wouldn’t get far before I was brought back. These suits have tracking chips, I’ll bet. So it’s not like I could get away and I realize that. I just want to be ready for when they come back. And, I don’t know, I just feel like I need it. You officers have your sidearms and the men have rifles. Feels like a missing limb.”
“All right, all right,” Cassidy said, scowling. “Don’t labor the point. Unless there’s anything you want to add to your sob story? But listen, if you fuck up or if you fuck me then I will fuck you, for real.”
“For real?”
“Do you understand?”
“Sure.”
Cassidy sighed and tapped a screen. “Collect it from the armory. There’s a ton of unique ammunition for your weapons just taking up space anyway, so you get it out of there. It’s your responsibility now. Don’t let me down and we’ll see what kind of a future you might have in the UNOPS Marine Corps.”
Ram grinned. “Yes, sir.”
But as he left, all he could think of was Sifa’s words to him in the mess hall.
You are being lied to.
***
The Armory was a nothing but a storage area with piles of boxes everywhere. It was no better protected against attack or theft than anywhere else in the small outpost.
“You already know how to operate it,” Sergeant Wu said, as he handed over the case for the XRS-Handspear. “All you need to look out for is the ammo feed jamming. I haven’t had time to have your ammo belts or the magazines quality assured. And, to be honest, I won’t have the time either. But I recommend you do it yourself or get one of your men to do it for you. In your team. One you trust, not one of the bad ones.”
Sergeant Wu was tired. Exhausted, even. And Ram had no wish to tax the man any more than he already had but he was the closest thing that Ram had to an ally in the Marines so he had to ask the guy.
“My team, Sergeant?” Ram said. “Who are the bad ones? They all seem normal, I don’t get why they’re the loser squad.”
Wu sighed, rubbing one eye. “To be honest, none of them are incompetent in terms of proficiencies. Everyone who was selected for this mission was of the highest caliber.” Wu yawned. “We scored high in mental resilience. It’s just that they all experienced situations that pushed them over the edge. Ensign Tseng was First Lieutenant, basically second in command after Cassidy. But they didn’t get on. Tseng kept undermining the Captain, then Cassidy would slap him down and one day I guess Tseng couldn’t take it any more. He took a swing at the Captain. In front of people, too. So he got busted and he just kept getting more and more bitter about it.”
“Yeah he seems miserable.”
“The others pretty much just have low level mental health issues that impacted their performance so much they were taken off duty.”
“What caused it?”
“Space madness.”
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just the relentless claustrophobia, the homesickness, the fear of sudden death due to decompression or explosion or radiation. We’re all resilient until we’re not, you know.”
“What about Sergeant Stirling? He seems fine. I mean, he seems like a terrifying, giant bastard but he doesn’t seem the type to be suffering from anything.”
“Just grief, I suppose. When your old friend started a shootout on the Victory, we lost four Marines. One of them was Private Sanctuary Nara. She and Stirling were very close.”
“Oh, shit. They were together? Romantically?”
“That kind of relationship isn’t allowed within a unit and certainly not where there is a difference in rank. But, yes. After she died, Stirling has been like he just doesn’t give a shit any more. Look, no offense, sir but I have a lot to do and we’re in the way here, so…”
“So I’ll take my massive guns and get out of here, got it. And thank you, Sergeant. Oh, one last thing. Feel free to tell me to go to hell but, the geographical location and tracking devices in our suits…. Is there a way to turn them off? Or at least mask the signal for a while?”
***
When darkness fell across the outpost, it seemed to happen abruptly. Wind speed increased and the clear skies filled with low cloud. A light rain fell. All around the outpost, illuminated by powerful beams and glowing lamps, work continued as the night watch began. Defenses were developed, with anti-vehicle ditches cut with pneumatic drills hammering ceaselessly into the black bedrock. The bulldozer worked tirelessly, scooping up and mounding the shattered stone into long banks design
ed to funnel the enemy into specific fields of fire.
Spaz Squad had a few hours to rest before beginning their scheduled work again before dawn. The team were assigned an empty lab unit to sleep in. It was a small space and with their suits, weapons and equipment, there was barely enough room for all of them to squeeze in between the benches and shelving that lined the walls. Ram was beginning to feel claustrophobic and desperate to get away, to get after Milena.
“You will leave your suits on,” Ensign Tseng commanded. “And your helmets and weapons will be within arm’s reach at all times.”
“This is bullshit,” Cooper said. “I get that I can’t have my own bunk but I have to get this suit off me or I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Again.” Harris said, with a grin. “Lose your mind again, Cooper.”
“Yeah and I’ll show you what losing my mind looks like, you stuck up piece of shit. I’ll lose my mind all over your fucking face.”
“That’s enough!” Sergeant Stirling said. In the silence that followed, every metallic surface hummed faintly from the force of his voice. The noises in the corridor outside dipped momentarily, until the people out there recovered from their surprise.
The members of Spaz Squad remained cowed by their sergeant’s wrath. Even Ensign Tseng.
“It’s crowded in here,” Ram said. “I’ll find somewhere else to bed down.”
“No you don’t,” Sergeant Stirling said, blocking the doorway. “Our team stays together.”
“I won’t be far away. Just need more leg room than is possible in here.”
“Fine,” Stirling said, without referring to the Ensign in the room. “Just leave your weapons.”
“No.”
Stirling offered his ear. “Come again?”
“I have to keep them on me at all times. Standing orders, Sergeant.”
“Are you reminding me of my orders, Seti?”
“I don’t know. Have you forgotten them?”
The Sergeant didn’t move from blocking the door. “You’re up to something.”
Ram felt the eyes of the others on him. “Am I?”