The Weapon

by Michael Z. Williamson

  Right then, a VG-9 Taranis vertol gunship dropped down, ready to give fire support, and four more of my kids came up in different locations. That was fast. I quickly waved them back to cover positions, not wanting any eager gunners to think Andut was one of the bad guys. He'd done a great job. Whether or not we could have handled the third one—he and Joel shot just about simultaneously—his response was quick, competent, and bespoke trust in us and a contempt for the factional killings. I wished I could find a proper way to thank him.

  It came to me as I descended the ladder to his place, CNS fading in an afterglow not unlike sex, that I'd made my first kill, and done it hand-to-hand. It was a strange combination of power and loathing, backed up by chemical enhancement, that would be with me for some time.

  We each thanked Andut for his support, and gratefully accepted the proffered pitchers of pineapple juice, which we downed straight, no glasses. I later did find a way to thank him as he deserved, by quietly spreading the word again about his place. Every Freeholder who could, and even a few of the UN troops, made it a point to eat there until they could handle no more of the broad variety of cuisine. He had holiday level sales for about a hundred local days, troops crammed into every corner, out the door, and even around back. Even now, he's a popular host with the remaining UN force, and has made a small fortune. He deserves it. People like him prevent terrorism and factional stupidity by their presence, and it takes more balls than most people have to stand up like that. He'd increased the odds of the factions targeting him.

  With a fading pulse thrumming in my skull, I dictated a report while a squad of Mob arrived to back us up. A Bison vertol equipped for medevac had Neil, and he was stable and fine. The bullet had been high enough power to breach his armor, and had missed his heart by three centimeters, but it had missed. He was stabilized, the hole in his lung temporarily cauterized, and was expected to be healed in a few days.

  After a while, I was able to be objective again, and decided we'd had enough acclimation. My people had responded flawlessly to the attack, we'd taken out the punks and even kept the perimeter secure while we did so. It was time to move on. I brought it up to Naumann.

  "Oh, I agree," he said. "If I ran this, you'd be hunting these rabble across the globe until they wet their pants at a mention of your name. But the UN won't let us out of this area, and until they thin their numbers, there isn't anywhere convenient to relocate and get any fire, so we're stuck here."

  "Dammit, Commander, we can handle this!" I complained. "They sit there and follow a book written by some bureaucrat on Earth, annoy people, accomplish nothing and get killed! In a week I've made my area so safe that business has doubled, killed three terrorists, captured four, seized seven small arms, a case of grenades, explosives, documents and a vehicle. That's better than some UN companies manage in a month of alleged patrolling, including the pistols and knives they claim as 'military' weapons."

  "I know, Ken," he said. "I'm on your side, remember? But we can't. If I could, we would, but it's not just political, it's a reality. Until we can move the UN, nothing is going to change."

  I decided to escalate things myself, if that's what it took. I would provoke these assholes into attacking us, so I'd have an excuse to squash them like shit beetles. In a red-tinged huff, I stormed over to the clinic. Neil was awake from surgery, and I was told he would be fine. I went in to see him, accompanied by a nurse.

  "How're you doing, big guy?" I asked.

  His voice was better than a croak, but not its usual soft baritone. "Could be better," he said. "I'll be okay."

  The nurse spoke up, "The projectile was slowed to subsonic by his body armor, thus minimizing the wound channel. It missed the liver, heart and inferior vena cava, and there is little additional hemorrhaging. The pleura and lung were punctured cleanly, and sealed at once, minimizing pneumothorax. With a few days of bed rest, he should be fine for limited duty."

  "Thank you, Leon," I said. Medics like to use first names, to develop rapport with their charges. It makes sense, and I go along with it. Especially as "Warrant Jester" sounds ridiculous.

  Neil nodded and said, "There you go, boss. Can you manage without me for a few days?"

  "That depends," I said. "We're going to be hunting. You're going to miss it."

  "Well," he said, "I'll get out of here as soon as I can. I don't like watching vid and I don't want to miss any action."

  "I'll talk to the doc," I said. "Rest up. You did a good job."

  He snorted. "I got shot and laid down. You guys did the work."

  I didn't talk to the doc. I talked to Naumann. Naumann talked to Neil and the doc. The doc screamed. We pulled "Best needs of the forces" on him.

  The next morning, we drove to our area, following yet another randomly generated route to minimize attack, and relieved the night shift from 3rd Mob. Neil was atop one of our GUVs, manning the gun.

  The regular staff and patrons of the plaza were shocked. Less than a day ago, he'd been carried out in a basket, wired and tubed and with full medical support. Now he was back, standing and crewing a heavy machinegun. They didn't need to know that he was under orders not to fire unless ordered to do so because he was doped to the teeth with painkillers and shock stabilizers. The doctor wasn't happy, but Naumann had agreed with me, and Neil was only too happy to get out of bed. The psych warfare value was too much to let go. Shoot us and die. We won't even take notice.

  The corpse of my target was still on the apron roadway, well-bloated and stinking. No one had dared touch it, lest they annoy us. That was one indication of how well we were doing: their religious need to bury the body had been overcome by fear of us. Good.

  It was almost shift change before a man came over, abjectly meek and with downcast eyes. He was dressed in local style in an absolutely unremarkable business jelaba. "Please," he said in Arabic, barely meeting my eyes, "I would beg permission to remove the body. The family would like to see that he is buried in proper fashion." He was obviously afraid of being nabbed and interrogated himself, just for mentioning a link to the sniper.

  So I changed the rules yet again. "You may remove the body. Be sure to leave any non-personal gear behind. I pray he will find the peace in death he couldn't find in life." I would not interrogate him, I decided. We were the good guys. We existed only to stop violence and were harmless to honest people. That was the effect we wanted.

  Chapter 9

  After much begging, pleading, cajoling, the UN decided we could tackle patrols in the city's Ta'izz Jadeed mostly Sunni section. They marked off an area for us, plugged us into their comm, and coordinated their support with ours. We made tours and patrols with them until we learned the situation.

  No, not really.

  They did carve a chunk of city out of the blocks of gray stone and concrete. Then they handed it to us and told us to take it, best wishes, thanks, suckers, and don't call us again. I got the idea they were only too happy to sign it over to us, and that it was not choice real estate. I was correct.

  My efforts to find out which sects and factions occupied this area had come to naught. The only UN officer I could find who'd admitted to having been in the area shrugged at my questions and said, "Sheetheads of some kind. They're all the same." He was representative of the forces present and a key part of the problem, not the solution.

  We went in cold.

  So there we were, patrolling in our GUVs, plugged into our net for air and arty support, driving past shattered hulks of buildings and watching for threats. That was everything. About 20% of the buildings were bombed out, another 10% already abandoned, the rest populated by people who stepped gingerly along the street and shied from parked vehicles. They also shied from us. Even when we tried to buy lunch. There wouldn't be any PR effect here. They were afraid to consort with us lest it bite them in the neck later, and too intent on keeping alive day by day, second by second to worry about the future. It was a precarious existence, hoping for someone to brave the threats to spend money, so
they got only local business and some precious little from those who worked elsewhere and couldn't afford to leave yet.

  We had to park and dismount often. Bombed out buildings had slumped across the roads. The streets were narrow, winding lanes, flanked by stark buildings and rubble that created shadowed canyons that are a soldier's nightmare. We'd send one vehicle around the block another way, while we stayed with the other two until the first reached the far side of an obstacle. Its crew would spread out around it on foot to search for threats, while the team gunner would sit in the open back hatch, covering a rear arc so the vehicle gunner could eyeball the front. One detour was eight blocks. Every street in the area had a severe blockage or more, chunks of stone and concrete surrounding shattered skeletons of polymer and old steel, resembling so many crushed limbs with bones protruding. Grisly. This city was dead, and no one had figured it out yet.

  For right now, we were acting as infantry. I had other patrols around me from Mob and Legion, and we kept a steady flow of intel for safety and nervous chatter for comfort. The few breaks we took were for water and rats we'd brought along, and latrine breaks were behind anything that shielded our rears, taking turns to whip it out or squat and piss in the street while our buddies covered us from the front and the gunners scanned blank-staring windows from the rear.

  Part of the fear people had of us might have been because a specialist named Kirby was with us, accompanied by his two assistants. The assistants were about 75 kilos each and 2.6 meters from nose to tip of tail. Trained military leopards. Great for sniffing threats both animated and fixed, great for hearing subtle whines and rustles that even AI sensors would neglect, and absolutely wonderful for scaring the shit out of people. Also, if we found someone who elected to flee, they could outdodge, outclimb and outrun him, and bring him down. While a barking dog can be surprising, we've had hundreds of thousands of years to get used to that sound. The snarl of a large cat is terrifying to the hindbrain. Kirby, Sphinx and Rasputin were effectively another fireteam as far as intel and fear factor went. I was glad to have them.

  Despite all the damage, there were open shops in half the buildings, people walking around, staring at us in disgust as we urinated or defecated on their streets. They kept clear of us, but moved slowly and didn't reach quickly into vehicles or bags, lest they alarm us. The kids saw us coming and cleared out of the way, taking their balls, bats, paint and ropes with them. Older kids stood guard over them with rifles. They didn't treat us with the awe that healthy kids do, imagining soldiers as heroes like city safety workers or truck drivers, nor did they ask about the animals. We were a nasty that might kill them at any moment, should they get between us and a target. Or if we should decide they were acting threatening. Or if we wanted some fun. Inside of a few blocks, we had dour, bitter expressions on our own faces. It was contagious.

  I was only too glad to hand control over to Sally Hayden and her squad of Mob at the end of the shift. I didn't envy her the shift that encompassed our first night (we'd started at midnight, come off at noon. So everyone knew we were new guys and had the day to plan what to do to us). We'd been first so we could get a good tour of the area in light and dark, and would soon take over the night like ghosts. Meantime, someone else had to be bait.

  It went on like this for over a week, we taking the nights and sealing our barracks windows with black paint so we could sleep by day. There were sporadic shots at us that didn't yield many casualties but did wrack our nerves. There were car bombs and arson against the locals. Assassinations took place now and then. Pointless. What we needed to do and couldn't was just bomb the shithole into sand and let them start over. Though we might be able to. The UN and their sensitivity concerns were slowly pulling out, leaving us and a Novaja Rossian contingent on the far side of the planet for last.

  Eventually, the odds caught up with us and my squad took fire. Along with the rest of our shift.

  It was a quiet, late evening, still dusky, as we'd gotten there a bit early. We deliberately varied our shift changes to make things less predictable, and to ensure that we had a squad ready for backup and already in position.

  We had good maps now, and I tapped my comm to generate a random patrol route. Everyone gathered around so to speak, even though none of us were within two meters of another and our sensors were dialed up to max to sniff for live explosives or weapons. With all the rubble and residue, it wasn't much help.

  "We're going to swing around the west with a cross to the east at the lawyers' district and finish the first sweep at the blocks," I said, referring to a series of low, square apartment buildings. "Then we'll come back and crossover south of that, then dogleg through the market district back to our other point." I was using nicknames, acronym-laden speech and Spanish, even though we shouldn't be where anyone could hear us. It was the kind of area to inspire that type of paranoia.

  It was barely sunset in the western sky, dark blue across the dome and with a faint fog settling in as we started off. The weather was calm and cool, about thirteen degrees. A good evening to patrol. Or at least a better than bad one.

  We updated our maps regularly, so we had less need to detour, now. I was in the lead GUV, riding shotgun while Geoff drove. Crazy bastard always volunteered to drive. I had Tyler above me covering front with the heavy, and Neil sitting in the back hatch covering left. Second vehicle covered right and left, third vehicle covered rear and right. We actually could swing better firepower to the rear, which pleased me. We practiced dragontoothing—parking the vehicles in a zigzag so we have overlapping fields of fire—whenever we stopped, so if we needed to in an emergency, it would be a conditioned reflex.

  It was a quiet, lulling evening. I hate those types. At the best, it dulls the senses. At the worst, it presages a pending attack. There was something definitely amiss. I took in the environment again. It was low buildings, ten floors or so. Squat, basic apartments built on cheap contract by some UN-connected contractor who'd built thousands of others in dozens of systems. We even had a few of the ugly things on Grainne, though we were getting rid of them as fast as possible.

  Just at that moment, Rasputin growled, low and in irritation. Kirby said, "What's up, boy? What do you hear?" I leveled my M5 out the window and checked for the twentieth time that both bullet and grenade cartridges were loaded. I gave Kirby some time to translate from Leopard. Finally, he said, "He smells something, boss. All around, present, but nothing we have signals for. Not sure what it is. Sphinx isn't triggering, but seems kinda antsy."

  I nodded even though he couldn't see me in the dark and crowded vehicle and said, "So we'll assume it's a general threat. Give them a treat." The buildings were now dark, with the windows black caves.

  "Sure. Here boys, liver snacks!" His voice was followed by appreciative grumbles and the smacking sounds of carnivore jaws on processed meat.

  As that happened, Geoff said, "Shit!" and slowed. I looked out through my visor and saw. Fresh damage, a crater and slumped buildings. Someone had cooked a car bomb. Spiffing. "I think I can make it," Geoff said.

  "You just keep on thinking that, and stay here," I replied. I triggered my mike and said, "Frank, we're going around." He would lead, we'd dismount to cover, Deni would go second, we'd remount as Frank reached the far side to cover us, and come last as Deni reached halfway. I didn't need to say that, we all knew the drill. He would repeat the ping I was about to send to Control so they'd know what we were doing.

  And it was right then that I heard fire. Then more. It came from two directions at once. Then a third. Dull thumps, sharp reports, the air-tugging Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-BANG! of support weapons, all punctuated by the cacophonous crash of incoming arty. Who the hell could get arty through the interdiction batteries the UN had?

  No time for that. I pinged a report to Control, not bothering with voice because everyone could hear it and the band was clogged with reports already. I heard a "SHHEEEEwhhhooooosh . . . pause . . . WHAM!" that was too fucking close, and ordered, "Everyone out. Buildi
ng to our right."

  Then I bumped the door handle with my knee, rolled out onto hard, painful road and wet my pants.

  Yes, I was scared, but that wasn't my motivation. I'd needed to go for some time, and modern hyper-velocity rounds will tear to sausage dense, liquid filled flesh. I wanted my abdomen as empty as possible in case of wounds. It would reduce the damage. If I needed to, I'd shit myself too. I would not be eating much even if there was time, and drinking in sips only. The skin irritation I'd fix later. My helmet said, "Three Zulu One—Control, unit approaching from your three hundred mil mark is friendly."

  Around the side of the building behind and to our right came a squad of troops in three GUVs. Good. I could use some backup. It's awfully scary being an infantry bug while artillery swats around. The squad leader spoke in my helmet, "Seven Alfa Three. Glad to meet you."

  "Seven Alfa Three, Three Zulu One," I replied.

  There was a moment's pause as his comm translated that for him. He was being told we were a Blazer unit, Recon. He knew what that meant, even though no one listening would. Black Operations, pal.

  He chuckled very briefly and replied, "Very glad to meet you, sir."

  My brain caught up with my reflexes, then. I made an estimate of reports on the radio, explosive reports around me and small arms chatter. Some of it was coming from the buildings around us. Splashes of dust and rubble bit the road around us. Not good. This wasn't a probe, it was an attack in force. They must mean to use the confusion of the UN departures to distract us and overwhelm us. My brain zipped through tactical calc as it never had before, and I took it upon myself to make a command decision. Well, I was the only officer in the area.