Contact Front #1 Drop Trooper

by Rick Partlow

  A column of black smoke still rose over it, three days later, a kilometer across and billowing into the sky, a monument to the ones who’d died to save their home. No one had died to save Tijuana. They’d abandoned it to the cartels and the gangs and the violence, and anyone worth a damn just wanted to get away, to get somewhere safe, where the government would take care of them. I’d seen how well that worked out. Maybe a life out in the colonies wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.

  I was still staring at the smudge of blackness when the knock on the door shook me from my thoughts. I made myself a bet in the half-second before I turned. Fifty-fifty odds it was the medic again, and the same probability that it was a Fleet personnel functionary sent to correct my misidentification as Gunny McIntire. Poor bastard, buried somewhere in the wilderness, dead before he could fire a shot.

  I would have lost the bet.

  “Alvarez,” Lt. Joyce Ackley said, smiling broadly. “It’s good to see you in one piece.”

  “Ma’am!” I blurted, frozen in place between one step and another, for the second time today, sure I was seeing a ghost. “Holy shit, how come you’re still alive?”

  She chuckled, but there was a tug of pain in the lines beside her eyes, lines I didn’t recall being there before. She stepped inside, moving a bit stiffly, as if she’d been hurt but not bad enough to be treated for it, and leaned against the wall, letting her head settle back.

  “It was a near thing,” she admitted. “The front end of the drop-ship held together a bit longer than the rear, just long enough for a few of us to make it to the ground without breaking every bone in our bodies.”

  “A few?” I stuttered out the words. I was afraid to ask and I looked away from the trauma playing out across her face.

  “Ten,” she elaborated, the words like broken glass. “Just ten of us lived through it, including you, and you were the only survivor from the rear of the bird. Me, four troopers from Third squad, Sandoval, Scotty Hayes….” I glanced up, finally hearing some good news, almost ashamed of the wash of relief I was feeling. “…and Cunningham.”

  I couldn’t stop the snort of dark amusement.

  “God loves idiots,” she observed. “But he doesn’t love them too much.” Her expression was bleak. “Cunningham is stuck in a tank of biotic fluid up on the Iwo Jima, in a medically induced coma while they grow him a new spinal column.”

  I winced, flush with sudden shame at my thoughts about the man. Cunningham was an asshole, but that wasn’t something I’d wish even on him.

  “The rest are all pretty banged up to one degree or another, including me.” She frowned. “I’m curious as to how the hell you wound up without a scratch and inside someone else’s suit.”

  “My Vigilante went for a swim, ma’am,” I confessed, giving her a brief run-down of what had happened. I didn’t mention Maria, or her father’s offer to come back here. I liked Lt. Ackley well enough, but we weren’t exactly close.

  Are you close with anyone?

  “At least Third Platoon accomplished the mission,” she reflected softly. Her gaze sharpened as she focused on me. “You know you’re probably going to get a Bronze Star for this?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, ma’am.” I still wasn’t. “Is Scotty here in the hospital or back upstairs on the Iwo?”

  “He’s here.” Finally, a smile crossed her face. “I just found out you were here. They still had you listed as MIA until about an hour ago. He and Sandoval don’t know you’re alive yet.”

  I returned her grin with one of my own.

  “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’m going to go take care of that myself.”

  The hospital was small and old-fashioned, like something you would have found in Tijuana, but with fewer gunshot wounds. The rooms were numbered by floor, but the ones where Lt. Ackley had told me Hayes and Sandoval were staying were empty when I checked them out. I was wandering around the third floor, looking for a doctor or medical technician to ask about them, since there wasn’t as much as a central data system terminal I could ‘link into, even if I’d had a ‘link to do it, when I found the break room.

  It wasn’t much, just a few pressed-wood tables and folding chairs gathered around as if in worship at the altar of an ancient coffeemaker, but there they were. Hayes was sitting in a wheelchair, his right leg extended out, wrapped in a bone-knitting sleeve, while Sandoval leaned against the table, looking pale and haggard but otherwise unencumbered by any portable medical equipment.

  “Leave it to a couple Marines to find the coffeemaker,” I said, leaning against the door frame to the break room.

  They both stared at me, frozen, speechless, and for a half a second, I thought they weren’t going to say a word. When the words came, they tumbled out and tripped over each other and Sandoval was rushing me as if it were unarmed combat training, and I almost went into a takedown defense. She swept me into a hug and I knew Hayes would have, as well, if he hadn’t been confined to the chair. Her embrace was strong enough to make my ribs creak and I returned it with equal enthusiasm, surprised at how glad I was to see both of them.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, Cam,” Sandoval murmured in my ear, her breath warm against my face. “We thought for sure you were dead. Oh my God, how the hell did you get out?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, arms still around her. It felt indescribably good holding her. Beyond the fact she was an attractive woman who I’d been interested in for months, just the sheer warmth of human connection was almost overwhelming.

  I wanted to say something, anything, but I couldn’t speak. I was crying, the sobs racking my shoulders, crying for Betancourt and Rodriguez and Gunny Guerrero, crying for Maria and the gunner whose name I hadn’t even known. Crying for Poppa and Anton, and for Momma. And for myself, for the youth I’d lost and the pain and the loneliness, for all the things I’d forced myself to endure without complaint because there was no one to listen to me whine, no one who would have cared.

  Sandoval didn’t let go and neither did I. She was saying something comforting, too low for me to hear, though I picked up the meaning. Hayes’ hand was on my arm, squeezing support even though he was stuck in his chair, muttering agreement with whatever Sandoval said. I wondered if they’d already done their crying in private. I hadn’t. I’d never trusted anyone enough to let myself cry in front of them, not even myself. Gradually, so slowly I thought it would never end, the sobs ebbed and I sucked in a breath, feeling empty and yet fulfilled all at once.

  Sandoval pushed my face off her shoulder, reaching up and wiping at my cheeks with the sides of her hands, then taking my face between her palms and kissing me ever so softly on the lips. She pulled back and the surprise must have shown in my eyes, because she laughed.

  “I think,” she said, disentangling herself from me, “you can call me Vicky now.”

  “Hi, Vicky,” I said, offering a hand. “I’m Cam.”

  “Nice to meet you, Cam,” she said in utter seriousness, shaking my hand as solemnly as if we’d just concluded a business deal.

  “I hope Cam’s a nicer guy than that Alvarez dude,” Scotty Hayes said, jabbing at my side, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Because he could be a real prick.”

  26

  The cargo hold of the Commonwealth Space Fleet transport Iwo Jima was depressingly roomy. A full company of Vigilante battlesuits had been packed into her confines three weeks ago, and now half of them were gone as if they’d never existed. Empty suit carriages yawned open like hollow graves and I tried to remind myself that not all the Marines who’d worn them were dead. A lot of suits had been wrecked in the mis-drops, a lot of people injured and trapped behind the lines, kept alive by the suit’s medical systems until after the battle’s end, like Lt. Ackley, Scotty Hayes, and Vicky Sandoval.

  Hell, I’d lost two of the damned things in the space of three days.

  I don’t know why I’d come back down here. The hold was basically deserted during Transition, when the artificial gravity was activated
. Why try to move around two-ton suits in one gravity when they could just wait until we popped back into realspace and take advantage of the microgravity?

  But there were too many officers wandering around the crew areas looking for someone to comfort or recommend psych counseling to and I just wanted to be alone for a while.

  “Gonna take a while to fill all those empty slots.”

  A few weeks ago, I might have jumped or sprang to attention at First Sergeant Campbell’s voice, but instead, I just nodded to the woman.

  “It sure is, Top.” I looked at the gaping hole where Gunny Guerrero’s suit had been stored. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it.”

  “Same way they do in any war, son,” she said, her tone surprisingly casual, even friendly. I found it a little disconcerting, like I should be checking over my shoulder for an ambush. “We promote what’s left and let them train the next group of newbies.”

  She was looking at me sidelong and I groaned as I realized what she meant.

  “You gotta be kidding me, Top,” I said, throwing up my hands. “I was just learning to be a damned team leader!”

  “And now you’re going to have to learn to be a squad leader,” she said, irritatingly reasonable. “Just like Sergeant Hayes is going to have to learn how to be Gunny Hayes, platoon sergeant.”

  “Holy shit,” I breathed the words, wondering how Hayes would react to that. “I guess it just hasn’t sunk in yet.”

  “It won’t for a while.” She sounded as if she’d been where I was standing. “It hasn’t quite for me, either. That’s why I came down here, to convince myself they’re really gone, give myself some time to deal with it.”

  “How long have you been a Marine, Top?” I asked her, finally taking a good, long look at the woman. At close range, I could finally see she had that aged yet ageless appearance of someone who’d been born on Earth or the inner colonies, and had the advantage of life-extending biotechnology.

  The corner of her mouth turned up, as if she enjoyed the idea that someone had finally asked her.

  “I enlisted as a private in the United States Marine Corps during the Sino-Russian War,” she told me, and the hair stood at the back of my neck.

  “Holy shit, Top!” I blurted. “That was…”

  “Over a century ago,” she finished for me. “Yes, I know.” Her eyes clouded over, her shoulders sagging just slightly as if under the weight of memories. “And if you think this war is bad, pup, you should have tried watching your technological society that’s been balanced on a razor’s edge for decades finally collapse in on itself. We were all pretty sure it was the end of the world, you know?”

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t even imagine. I’d seen the videos, the history documentaries showing the horrors of the nuclear war between China and Russia that had nearly brought an end to civilization, but I couldn’t put myself in her shoes any more than someone born and raised as a Surface Dweller in Trans Angeles could imagine what it was like to live in Tijuana.

  “The old cities burned,” she said, her voice quiet, almost a whisper. “Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta…and that was just in the United States. London, Paris, Rome…anywhere the food stopped coming, the riots started only days later. The police couldn’t stop them, so they brought in the military and the streets ran red with blood. And when the world came up for air, nearly four billion people were dead, and the old world with it.” She blew out a breath as if the words had exhausted her. “I stayed a US Marine until the Commonwealth took over all military duties, then I took my retirement. For all of thirty years. This was right about the time the life extension treatments became available. I had nothing else to spend all that money I’d saved on, and my veteran status put me near the front of the line. It was like starting over. Got a normal job, got married, raised three kids.”

  I didn’t speak. This seemed unreal, the confessions of a ghost from another time, and I didn’t dare interrupt for fear she’d fade into the shadows as if she’d never existed. Or, more likely, yell at me and give me extra duty for interrupting her.

  “Got divorced,” she went on, her shrug philosophical. “Retired from another career. And was looking for something meaningful to take up what looked like it could be a very, very long life. And then we found the wormholes and the Tahni along with them, and all of a sudden, the Commonwealth needed a Fleet, and the Fleet needed a Marine Corps.” She smiled thinly. “And the Marine Corps needed me.”

  “How the hell aren’t you a general by now?” I asked, honestly amazed. “Or Sergeant-Major of the Marine Corps?”

  Top barked a laugh.

  “Two reasons, kid. First, I’m far from the only old-timer in the Corps, and people who’ve been around as long as us tend not to quit. And two, and if I’m being honest most important to me, is that First Sergeant is the highest rank I can handle and still be on the front lines. I didn’t join the Marines to sit behind a desk, and I don’t think you did, either.”

  “I joined the Marines because I didn’t have any other choice, First Sergeant,” I admitted.

  “I read your file, Alvarez. Don’t flatter yourself,” she added, “I read the files of all the newbies. You had a choice. You could have turned in your accomplice and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. You joined the Marines because you didn’t want to be alone. You wanted a family, and the Marines will give you one. Just like any other family, you won’t be able to stand some of them, and you’ll spend as much time fighting each other as fighting the enemy, but in the end, love them or hate them, they’ll have your back.”

  If anyone else had said it, I might have argued with them. When I’d said yes to the deal, I could have sworn I was joining up to get myself killed and get it over with. But I could have done that in the train station, if that was what I wanted.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Top,” I said, making a decision…or perhaps merely giving in to a realization. “There’s something I need to do.”

  Wade Cunningham looked like death warmed over. He was out of the Tank and back in a sick bay bed, which meant the nanite bath had done its job and finished regrowing his pulverized vertebrae and mending the gaps the fragmented bone had torn in his spinal cord, but you don’t get that kind of thing for free. Especially not when you spent three days in a coma, with only the suit’s medical systems to keep you alive. Where Cunningham had once been filled out, beefy, intimidating, he now seemed drained and skeletal.

  He was asleep when I stepped into the compartment, and I thought long and hard about turning around and heading back. Then his eyes fluttered open and swam into gradual awareness, focused on me.

  “Alvarez,” he rasped, trying to scoot up in bed. I wouldn’t have thought he had the strength, but somehow, he reached the button to raise the mattress up, then grabbed a cup of water from the bedside table and gulped it down. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard they had to grow you a backbone, Cunningham,” I said, grinning a challenge. “About time, huh?”

  Cunningham’s expression twisted into a scowl for a second, firming up his sagging features for an instant, but then his head settled back into the pillow and he began chuckling, low and long.

  “You’re an asshole, Alvarez,” he said, “but I guess I was a bigger one. And at least you came through.” There was bitterness in his tone and in the set of his eyes. “All I managed to do was pound myself into the ground like a fucking tent stake.”

  I felt weird looming above him and I sat down on the edge of the hospital bed, instead, bringing us about level with each other.

  “It was dumb luck I came down over that lake,” I assured him. “Two seconds one direction or the other, and I’d either be dead or in the next bed over from you.”

  “I came down pretty close to the city,” he corrected me. “If the Fleet had gone ahead and nuked the Tahni base, I would have been dead, and so would a bunch of the rest of us. You kept that from happening.”

  I shook my head, uncomfortable with approbation in
general and in particular from Cunningham, someone who’d pretty much hated me before. It felt dishonest, somehow, as if he suddenly liked me for a situation which I hadn’t been in control over instead of for who I was.

  It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to love him, you just have to work with him.

  “You’ll have your own chance to be the hero, Wade,” I told him, trying to mimic Gunny Guerrero, or Top, or the Skipper, because I was not any sort of leader. Maybe if I could imitate the Marines that I knew who were leaders, people wouldn’t notice. “There’s a lot of war left to fight.”

  I slid off the hospital bed and clapped him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Hit me up when we’re back on Inferno and I’ll buy the first round at Myths and Legends. And maybe this time, I won’t have to wake up in a jail cell.”

  “Sure thing.” He raised his forearm and I bumped it. “Thanks for stopping by, Cam. And I just…” He trailed off and I thought for a second he was about to cry. “Just thanks.”

  “Any time, Wade.” I tossed an offhanded wave as I left. “Get better.”

  I let the door shut behind me, pausing in the passageway to take in a breath. That had been so much more awkward and uncomfortable than I’d imagined, and I’d imagined it being pretty bad. How the hell did anyone do this for a living?

  “Get better, son. There’s work to do.”

  I glanced over at another of the sickbay compartments and saw the Skipper standing at the bed of one of the wounded, smiling down at the man, managing to look comforting and solicitous and so very confident, all at once. I didn’t recognize the patient. I thought he might have been from Fourth Platoon. I knew he was a drop-trooper because not one of the Force Recon Marines had survived the ambush.

  I stopped and watched Captain Covington, trying to memorize how he engaged with his people. When he finished up and headed out of the compartment, I thought about ducking away before he could see me, but it was too late.