Tour of Duty: Stories and Provocation

by Michael Z. Williamson

She wondered how other troops and units had done. Was anyone trying to retake the captured Freehold facilities? Or to destroy them outright? Would the attacks be successful, and allow the presumed counter to work? Would they win?

  She’d never know. She could only wish them luck.

  Jan awoke with a start. Guilt flooded over the adrenaline, as he realized he’d slept past when he was supposed to be on guard. He shrugged and decided it didn’t matter, as the chance of anyone interfering was incredibly remote. It still bothered him.

  It was close to deadline, and he realized he didn’t even know what this operation was called, only that it probably involved the entire system, aimed for infrastructure, and was suicidal. That was probably enough.

  He still had a couple of hours of oxy.

  Hypoxia/anoxia would be pretty painless. A little struggle for breath . . . he could take those two hours. It wasn’t impossible a rescue vessel might show up. It just took a hell of a lot of zeros to make the odds. Two extra hours of life, though.

  He decided he didn’t have whatever it took to let himself die slowly. He was already shivering in shock; the tranks were wearing off.

  He snagged the tether and dragged himself hand over hand to the station. He hooked to the contact patch near the charge. The only thing worse than being blown to dust, he thought, would be to be injured by it and linger for hours in pain. He wished Meka luck, aching to know if she’d make it. That hurt as much as anything else. There were fewer zeros on her odds, but they were still ludicrously remote. Their mission was to smash enemy infrastructure, not occupy and set up housekeeping.

  There was nothing left. He settled down to read, gave up because he couldn’t focus, and turned on music to break the eerie silence. If he had to die, he wanted it to be painless and instantaneous.

  When the charge underneath him detonated, he got his final wish.

  Costlow sweated, with aching joints and gritty eyeballs from sitting far too long at the controls. He watched the display in his helmet, trying to ignore the way the helmet abraded behind his left ear, and made another minute flight correction. He had minutes left to live.

  4J23 was close behind the London, and undiscovered as far as they knew. Sarendy screwed with their emissions, inverted incoming scans, sent out bursts low enough in energy to pass as typical, powerful enough to keep them hidden and the gods only knew what else. He wished there were some way to record her competence. She was a fifteen year-old kid, and likely knew more about her job than all her instructors combined. Add in her bravery, and she deserved ten medals.

  No, he thought, she deserved to live. Rage filled him again.

  He forced the thoughts back to his mission. He was hungry and thirsty, but he daren’t pause to do either. This could all come down to a fractional second’s attention. Especially now that they were so close.

  He brought 4J23 in in a tight, twisting curve from the blind spot behind the drives, and aimed along the approaching superstructure. London’s defenses found him, and a launch warning flashed in his visor. It missed because Sarendy switched to active jamming and burned its sensors out with a beam that should have been impossible from a recon boat, and would almost fry an asteroid to vapor. The brute force approach was an indication that all her tricks were exhausted, and it was doubtful they could avoid another attack. He flinched as the missile flashed past, even though it was detectable only as an icon in his visor, and heard a cry of sheer terror start quietly and build. He realized it was his voice. He’d wet himself, and was embarrassed, even though he understood the process. He could hear Sarendy panting for breath, hyperventilating behind him, and wondered what Jemayel was doing in the stern. His eyes flicked to the count in his visor—

  Now.

  Alongside the London, within meters of her hull and at closest approach to her command center, a small powerplant overloaded and detonated. It was enough to overwhelm her forcescreens, vaporize her forward half, and shatter the rest in a moment so brief as to be incomprehensible. One hundred UN spacers were turned into incandescent plasma by the blast, along with the three Freeholders.

  Meka watched the seconds tick away in her visor. She dropped her left hand and grasped the manual trigger, set it, and held on. It would blow if she let go, or on schedule, and her work was almost done. The count worked down, and she closed her eyes, faced “up” and took a deep breath to steady herself. She opened them again to see it count 3 . . . 2 . . . 1—

  Whether her thumb released or the timer acted first was irrelevant. The blast damaged the station’s fusion plant, which shut down automatically, even as it vented to space. She felt the cracking and rumbling of the structure through her body, fading away to nothing. It would take a dockyard to repair that, and they’d have to remove the wreckage first. She moved back toward the powerplant, navigating by touch in the dust, and dragged herself around several supports twisted by the blast. She entered the engineering module and waited. The particles cleared very slowly, as there was neither airflow nor gravity. It all depended on static charges and surface tension to draw things out of vacuum, and Meka stayed stock still until she could get a good look through her faceplate, cycling through visible, enhanced and IR to build a good picture. She nodded in approval of the damage. The blast and fusion bottle failure had slagged half the module.

  Her task was now done, but she had no desire to die immediately. She could have embraced the charge on the reactor and gone with it. Her rationale had been that she should be certain, although the charge had been three times larger than she’d calculated as necessary. The truth was, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Death might be inevitable, but she still feared it.

  She studied the life support system whimsically. Without a proper deckplan, she’d just vented every compartment from outside to be sure. Her charge over this one had punched into the makeup tank. There was a functional air recycling plant, but no oxygen. A meter in any direction . . .

  There were no escape bubbles. This was a station, not a ship. If damaged, the crew would seal as needed and call for help. She’d fixed that when she vented atmosphere. There were extra suit oxy bottles, but the fittings didn’t match. Even if they did, there was no heat, and her suit powerpack was nearing depletion. Jan would easily have cobbled something together, or tacked a patch over the hole in life support and used the suit bottles, but even if she could do so before her own gas ran out, it still meant waiting and hoping for a rescue that would likely never come. There was no commo capability, of course. That had been her prime target. No one knew to look for her. The remote possibility of rescue they’d discussed had been for Jan’s benefit, to let him hope she might survive. He’d probably figured out the lie by now.

  With time and nothing better to do, she planted charges on every hatch, every port, every system. She fired bullets liberally to smash controls and equipment; wedged the airlocks with grenades to shatter the seals and render them useless. Even the spare parts inventory was either destroyed or blown into space.

  Finally, she sat outside on the ruined shell, watching her oxy gauge trickle toward empty. Her weapons were scattered around her, some lazily drifting free in the emgee, each rendered inoperable and unsalvageable, all save one. She really had harbored an unrealistic hope that there’d be some way out of this, and cried in loneliness. There was no one to see her, and it wasn’t the first time she’d cried on a mission. Blazers didn’t look down on tears and fear, only on failure. She had not failed.

  The stillness and silence was palpable and eerie. She brought up her system and cycled through her music choices. Yes, that would do nicely. La Villa Strangiato. The coordination and sheer skill impressed her, and the energy in the performance was powerful and moving. It filled the last five-hundred seconds and faded out. Silence returned.

  A warning flashed in her visor and sounded in her ears, becoming more and more tinny as oxygen was depleted. She’d black out in about a hundred seconds.

  One thing she’d always wondered was how far her courage
went. People died all the time. Soldiers died when ordered to fight and the odds ran out. Sick people died because life was not worth living.

  But, could she die by choice? Her courage had been tested throughout her career, and this last year to an extreme. But did she have the strength to pull that switch herself?

  After prolonging the inevitable this long, it was rather moot, but her life wouldn’t be complete without the experiment. She armed the grenade, stared at it as her body burned from hypoxia, and tried to force her hand to open. Lungs empty now, she gritted her teeth, pursed her lips, and threw every nerve into the effort. Her wrist shook, thumb moving bit by bit. Willpower or self-preservation?

  She was still conscious, though groggy, as her thumb came free and the fuse caught. Three seconds. Hypoxia segued to anoxia and her thoughts began to fade. The last one caused a triumphant smile to cross her face, even as tears pooled in her eyes.

  Willpower.

  On slabs of green and black marble in Freedom Park are the names of two hundred and sixteen soldiers who accepted orders they could not understand and knew meant their deaths. Words were said, prayers offered, and torches and guards of honor stand eternal watch over them. Their families received pensions, salutes and bright metal decorations on plain green ribbons, presented in inlaid wooden boxes.

  One family received two.

  Desert Blues

  I deployed twice to the Middle East, both relatively short deployments. In 1999 I was at Ahmed al Jaber Airbase in Kuwait, doing some construction for Operation Desert Fox/Southern Watch/Guarded Skies. We had one threat warning that wasn’t a big deal, except at that moment I was in a truck on the far side of the flightline on a road with UXO (UneXploded Ordnance) markers on either side of the road, and nowhere to take cover. Luckily, it was a false alarm. Good times, good times.

  In 2008 I was at an Undisclosed Airbase in the Middle East (well, two, actually), which is how the USAF identifies every base unless there’s some need to specify. I was armed with a brand new GUU5P carbine, the USAF version of the M4, with standard sights and a happy switch—full auto instead of burst, and body armor, etc. though most of the time the battle gear was rolled up under my bunk or cot. I never needed it, really.

  But everyone has a different war. I’d stayed in well past twenty years in part to make sure I did deploy. I wanted more action. Some people couldn’t handle even stateside callups away from their families and had issues. I know some infantry guys who went six tours, and our powerplant boss was a reservist who did eleven tours—six months over, six at home, repeat.

  Regardless of why anyone chose to be there—it’s an all volunteer military, and by 2008, everyone had enlisted or reenlisted after the events of 2001-2003—we chose to be there. It’s a very different environment than anywhere in the U.S., with different people. Part of me is in the Middle East, and part of it is in me. In fact, I have asthma and other lung damage from sand, debris and assorted contaminants. I’ll never forget that place.

  But it’s also part of what makes me who I am, and it shows up in my writing. I still have a story in my head that won’t quite resolve the way I need it to. I’ll write it down eventually. In the meantime, there’s this:

  A deployment to the Middle East is like Groundhog Day with sand. Every day, hot, dry, dusty, winds from the north-northwest at twenty-five kilometers per hour. Same people. Same duty. Same crappy music on Freedom Radio. Occasionally someone does something stupid or takes a shot at you, then it goes right back to the way it was. If you’re lucky enough to be there in winter it gets cold and muddy. I was not lucky. I walked through an oven. At least it wasn’t windy, or it would feel like a hairdryer combined with a sandblaster. I had a clean PT uniform, a towel, a kit and a rifle. Just the bare necessities.

  One of the very few conveniences (I won’t say “pleasures”) is that after a shower, you dry off in seconds just from the low humidity. I’d taken a shower, was dry and clean and would be until the first breeze blew sand onto me, and was on my way back to my tent when I heard the guitar.

  There’s always a person or ten with enough talent to play, but this guy was good. Somewhere a few tents over, he had an electric and a small amp and I heard Clapton’s “Layla.” It was a pretty good wail. He could sing, too. “You got me on my kneeeeees . . . ”

  One of the sucky things was that I was at this remote hole in the middle of the desert to back up the Army. The Army does a lot of things very well. What they don’t do is infrastructure. These poor saps had a growing Contingency Operating Base and couldn’t get enough “big” generators in to power things. That’s because a lot of Army units consider a 25kW generator to be “big,” especially those units that get sent forward.

  So, twenty of us Air Force engineers showed up with Christine and Lucille, each 1.25 megawatts of diesel-powered bitch, and a few Environmental Control Units for extra air conditioning, or in some cases, just air conditioning. In that part of the world, it’s pretty much a necessity if you don’t want to die.

  Fortunately, their officers knew to slide the orders into the hooch, back out carefully, and let us get to work. We had our own sleeping tent, our own operations tent, and when not taking care of immediate tasks spent the time customizing and comfortizing the amenities.

  We all had iPods and such, but good live music was always welcome. The guitarist was better than most of the professional bands who occasionally played for an hour on some USO gig.

  He trailed off “Layla” and started some Stevie Ray. Now, this was just too good. I took a detour on my way to the tent to make sure I kept it in hearing.

  I just reached the north end of camp where we live when behind me I heard a whoosh and a Bang! Everything shook and flapped, air slapped at me, and I changed direction toward the nearest bunker, which was about twenty feet away.

  A lot of people get fatalistic about attacks and just ride them out. I’m older and more cynical. The odds of getting hit are low, but who wants to win the lottery? I slowed quickly as I neared it, used the gravel under my flip flops to brake and steer sideways under the concrete overhead. Just then, someone at the Plant killed the outside lights. Good. Why make targeting easy for the insurgents?

  There were bodies already here. I flashed my weapon light on the ground for a half second and in the reflected glare caught two soldiers mostly untangled. The back of her PT uniform was dusty, and so were his knees and forearms. She was pulling her shirt down and blushing thoroughly. Sorry, kids. I wasn’t going to blame them for it, but they were done for tonight.

  “Move to the middle,” I said. I heard them scooting across gravel in the dark. I recognized a silhouetted body coming in as my buddy from Utah Air Guard, Paul. Others came in both ends as a second Bang! shook things. It was a pretty good sized one, too.

  “I was just going to take a shower,” I heard Lieutenant Smith, the Army Engineer officer we worked through grouse from the other end. “Report,” he said.

  “Not much yet, sir,” I said. “No casualties in here, and I was just coming from a shower.”

  Pretty much everyone who was going to take cover probably had by now. There were a dozen people in this sandbag-covered pipe, getting as comfortable as possible with gravel under ass, concrete behind back, assorted sharp things, crushed plastic bottles and feet and knees in the way. I folded my towel up and sat on it to cut the jabs from the rocks.

  The guitarist was still playing. I heard him singing and riffing. “The sky is crying . . . ” Cute.

  “Shouldn’t someone go get him and anyone else left, sir?” The question came from Senior Master Sergeant Richards. I privately called him the Big Dick. He wanted every letter of every regulation and Air Force Instruction followed, even those that contradicted each other. Then he also wanted Army regs followed, including the ones he wasn’t sure about. Of course, he neglected them for himself. He might complain about someone wearing the wrong glasses, wrong hat, dogtags in boots and not around neck, but he usually needed a haircut and left his po
ckets unbuttoned. I was just glad we were on opposite shifts.

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” LT Smith said. He was young but I liked him. Good head on his shoulders for a kid of twenty-two.

  “But, sir, SOP is for everyone to shelter in place.” Richards was just like that. Insistent. Was he going to get out and go get people? Had he done so? Nope, but he’d be happy to have someone else order some other someone else to do so.

  “He’s fine,” the LT insisted. He sounded bored and annoyed.

  I could tell from the shifting that Richards was agitated. He wasn’t going to say anything now, though.

  BANG!

  That one was close enough to punch my ears, tug at the air in our little tube and there were gasps and whimpers. Not me. I’d laid these sandbags and trusted them, and knew if I heard it I was still alive. I also felt obligated to set a good example for the young troops, kids really, and for the honor of the Air Force. I didn’t flinch that anyone could tell in the dark. I did pucker up my eyes and my ass, though.

  The young woman was sobbing. I could hear mutters and shifting. We were all going to be . . . well, I don’t know what word to use, but there’d be a bond after this.

  Someone, either one of our SPs or an Army MP thought they had a target, and opened up with a .50. BaBaBaBaBaBaBANG! BaBaBANG! BaBaBaBaBaBaBANG! hammering and drumming through the night air.

  And that was when the guitarist cranked up the volume and distortion. Three chords blared out, and I had a WTF? moment.

  I knew those chords.

  Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing.” Raunchy, cheerful, rude.

  Then he started singing, loudly.

  “Listen to them assholes, that ain’t how you do it . . . ”

  And a wave of laughter and cheers just burst out of us.

  “ . . . mortars for nothin’, IEDs for free.