Lines of Departure

by Marko Kloos

  Eventually, the fallout decreases in intensity, and we climb to the top of the hill to observe the target area. As we reach the crest, I see the mushroom cloud of the nuclear detonation rising into the sky just a few kilometers in front of us. It billows and roils like the skin of a living, breathing thing.

  “I never get tired of seeing those,” Sergeant Keller says.

  “What are you, some sort of adrenaline junkie?” I reply.

  “Not really,” he says. “My folks got killed on Willoughby a few years back. Mom, Dad, both my sisters. I’d just joined up, or I woulda been there, too. Far as I’m concerned, every nuke dropped on these things is money well spent. Wish I could unzip this suit and piss on the ashes, too.”

  The valley is wiped clean. Just as I expected, the force of the surface blast has been amplified by the steep granite walls of the canyon, and the shock wave has bounced through the valley several times. Right in the center of the mile-wide rift, there’s a new crater, a hundred feet deep. We can’t see anything through our optical sensors—the billowing debris cloud making up the base of the atomic mushroom will linger for a while longer yet—but our radar, laser, and ultrasound imagers work in concert to give us a good idea of the devastation we visited on the Lanky settlement.

  “Whoo-ee,” the lieutenant chirps. “Don’t nobody pop off their helmet to scratch a nose. Radiation level is ‘extra crispy.’”

  With all the electromagnetic noise in the neighborhood of a nuclear explosion, voice comms with the fleet are out of the question. I do, however, have a redundant data link with the Intrepid, and I use it to send up another encrypted burst transmission, this one with a sensor-data upload and a status code for our team: mission accomplished, no casualties, ready for pickup. I repeat the transmission a few times on several sub-channels until my screen flashes with a reply code from Fleet.

  “Taxi is on the way, friends and neighbors. ETA is two-five minutes.”

  “Fabulous,” Lieutenant Graff says. “Another good day at the office.”

  The team sets up a perimeter while we’re waiting for the arrival of the recovery ship. The security measure is largely ceremonial at this point because any Lanky alive within ten kilometers will be moving away from the unfriendly mushroom cloud, but training is hard to overcome.

  I spend a few solitary minutes on top of the hill, surveying the destruction I’ve called down upon the unsuspecting Lankies in that settlement.

  I’m not religious, and I doubt I ever was, despite my mom’s efforts to get me into the embrace of the Mother Church back in Boston when I was young. I do know my Bible, however. I recall the Book of Exodus, the verses telling of the angel of death passing through Egypt at night and killing all the firstborn children, sparing only the houses with the mark of lamb’s blood on the doorposts. In a way, I am an angel of death as well, but the power I serve is even more vengeful and merciless than the god of Israel. I’m the one who marks the doorposts in the night, and we pass over none.

  CHAPTER 4

  Time spent planetside: just a little under eight hours. Time spent in decontamination, medical post-mission checkup, debriefing, weapon return, and equipment inventory check: just a little under eight hours. When I finally fall into my bunk after grabbing some sandwiches from the NCO mess, I’ve been awake for close to twenty-four hours. Even without the no-go pills they offer to us after missions, I fall asleep almost instantly, dreaming dark dreams of ash and fire.

  In the morning—or what passes for it on a windowless starship in deep space—I go over to the ops center to check on the results of our mission.

  Our team wasn’t the only one to go planetside. Two more teams hit the dirt just after we did, to locate and mark two smaller Lanky settlements on the same continent. Both teams dropped with a combat controller. The other missions were less eventful than ours, and both teams made it back to the Intrepid without any casualties. Overall, the mission was an unqualified success—fifteen troopers on the planet tagged three major settlements and twelve atmospheric processors for bombardment, and the fleet dropped fifteen warheads, totaling a quarter megaton of yield. The fleet uses the lowest yields needed to get the job done, to keep the eventual cleanup to a minimum if we ever get to reclaim the place. In terms of personnel and material, we came out way ahead. We spent about a hundred Linebacker missiles to make a hole in the minefield, and fifteen nukes to wipe out the ground targets. With that material outlay, we caused a few thousand Lanky casualties and wiped out 15 percent of their terraforming capacity. But when it comes down to scale, I’m not sure our efforts made much of a dent. The Lankies will grow new terraformers in less than a month in non-radiated alternate locations, and our Linebacker has fired a quarter of its missile stores for just three artillery strikes. It would take a task force ten times the size of ours to scrape all the Lanky structures off New Wales.

  Almost five years of getting our omelets folded by the Lankies, and we’ve just now graduated to light harassment. Five more years of this asymmetrical exchange, and there’ll be nothing left to defend.

  We transition back into the solar system a day later.

  “All hands, stand down from combat stations,” the CIC announces on the overhead as we decelerate into the empty space between Earth and Mars where the Alcubierre chute from Theta Persei terminates. The ride back to Gateway will take another seven days.

  I’m about to grab some more rack time in my berth when my PDP vibrates with a noncritical message alert. I pull the data pad out of my pocket and turn it on to find that my nominal department head, Major Gomez, is summoning me to his office “as soon as convenient.”

  “Staff Sergeant Grayson, reporting as ordered, sir,” I say as I knock on the bulkhead beside Major Gomez’s open office door.

  The major looks up from the screen of his MilNet terminal and waves me into the room.

  “Come in, Sergeant. Take a chair.”

  I can’t exactly take one, since all the furniture is bolted to the deck, but I do as I’m told, and wedge myself into the space between the visitors’ chair and the major’s desk.

  “What’s the story, sir? My promotion to sergeant first class come through already?”

  “You just made staff sergeant—what, nine months ago?”

  “Eight,” I say. I’d like to think that the major knows this fact off the top of his head, but he probably has my personnel file on the screen of his terminal right now, opened to the section with my promotion schedule on it.

  “Well, then you get to wait another sixteen months in rank for the next chevron, just like all the other boys and girls on the promotion list. We just synced up with the Mars node. You have new deployment orders.”

  “I heard she’s going in for a refit,” I say, and glance at the computer printout the major has picked up from his desk. “What’s it going to be this time?”

  “You’ll report to NACS Manitoba when we get back to Gateway.”

  “Huh,” I say. “How about that?”

  “How about what?”

  “Oh, I’ve been on the Manitoba before. That was the ship that saved our asses back on Willoughby when we bumped into the Lankies for the first time.”

  “It’s a small fleet,” the major says, “and getting smaller all the time.”

  He hands me the printout. I glance at it to verify the name of the ship in the field marked “DUTY STATION: NACS Manitoba CV-1034.”

  “Trouble is, the Manitoba’s under way right now. They’re coming back from Lambda Serpentis, and they’re due back at Gateway fifteen days after we get there.”

  “Well, shit,” I say.

  With the Intrepid headed for the refit dock, I’ll have to spend two weeks in the Transient Personnel Unit, the purgatory on Gateway where people spend their time with busywork while they wait for their assigned ships to return from deployment. I’d almost rather do combat drops against the Lankies instead.

  “Why don’t you burn up some of your leave, hop down to the old homestead?”

&
nbsp; “I’ve used up all my leave for the year, Major,” I say.

  “It’s January,” the major says. “You signed up in a January, didn’t you? Your next annual leave allowance comes available on February first. We won’t be at Gateway until February third. You need some downtime between drops, just like the machines.”

  I was going to save up some leave time to spend with Halley, for whenever Fleet lets her take some time off, but then I remember that my girlfriend is stationed at Fleet School on Luna right now. Even if she can’t take any leave, I’ll at least be able to go up there on a personnel shuttle run to drop by for a visit.

  “In that case, I guess I’ll put in for leave, sir. If I have to spend another day in the TPU counting towels, I’ll airlock myself.”

  I’d love to share the news with Halley face-to-face, but vidcomms have to be scheduled ahead of time to conserve bandwidth, and she’s right in the middle of her workday at Fleet School. Instead, I dash off a message to her PDP across MilNet.

  Do you have any downtime coming up? I’m coming back to Gateway for some enforced leave. I can come over to Luna for a visit if you want.

  I send the message off to Halley and head back to my berth for some sleep.

  When I wake up at the next watch change, I check the time on my PDP to find a new message on the screen.

  >I have a full roster during the day, but I’m free in the evenings, and I get Sundays off. Hope you didn’t get any essential equipment damaged on that last mission of yours. Send me a message when you get to Gateway, and I’ll pick up my berth a bit and tell the CQ to expect you.—H.

  I close the message and turn off my PDP with a smile.

  Here we are, on the losing end of an interstellar war, with our world slowly falling apart around us, and I’m excited about going to see my girlfriend for a day or two. We may have gone from oar-powered galleys to half-kilometer starships in the span of two thousand years, but some things about humanity seem to be a universal constant, no matter the era.

  It’s almost impossible for soldiers to have contact with anyone on Earth because the military’s network doesn’t talk to the civilian world for security reasons. They do let us send messages to direct relatives, though. My mother has a mailbox on the system as a “Privileged Dependent/Relative,” and she gets an hour or two of heavily restricted MilNet access per month. I know she treks down to the civil center every third Sunday of the month to collect her mail. Especially since during my first year of service, after Halley and I almost got killed on Willoughby when the Lankies made their first appearance, I started sending messages to my mother after a long dry spell of no communication.

  At first I didn’t have all that much to say to her, so I used the mail system as a journal of sorts. After a while, she started sending entries of her own, telling me what was happening in her world. Mom is actually a good writer—she’s thoughtful and perceptive, and her updates let me see life in our old PRC in a whole new light. It’s a shame that I had to go into space and light years away from home to find out that my mother actually has opinions worth reading.

  I compose a message on my PDP and tell my mother that I have leave coming up, and that I finally want to stop by for a visit Earthside. When I send the message out to Mom’s mailbox, I have the sudden urge to look for some sort of souvenir, something to bring back home for my mother as evidence of my activities, but when I look around in my berth, I realize that I don’t own a single thing that wasn’t issued to me by the military. Five years of sweating, fighting, and bleeding, with billions of kilometers traveled and over a hundred colony planets visited, and the only thing I have to show for it is a collection of colorful ribbons on my Class A smock and an abstract number in a bank account somewhere in a government computer. If I die in battle next month, there will be no evidence that I ever existed.

  On the plus side, when everything you own can fit into a small locker, packing for a move is easy.

  CHAPTER 5

  I have two bags for clothing and equipment in my issued inventory. The larger one is a huge duffel bag with sewn-in polymer stiffeners. It’s big enough to hold most of the contents of my shipboard locker. The duffel is mostly used to haul gear around between duty stations. Mine is worn and frayed after five years of skipping from post to post, ship to ship. The smaller one is called the furlough bag, and it’s just big enough to hold enough clothes and a personal kit for a few days. The furlough bag is mostly used for going on leave, and mine is virtually pristine.

  Since our trip back home takes a week, I have plenty of time to square away my gear and say my good-byes to my friends on the ship. By the time the Intrepid engages the docking collar at Gateway, I am ready to step off the ship and move on. I leave my heavy duffel on my rack for transfer pickup, and take my furlough bag to start my two weeks of leave. Against all my pessimistic expectations, CIC does not announce combat stations, and nobody whistles me back when I step past the security detachment at the main docking hatch to leave the ship for good. As I walk out into the hallway of Gateway Station beyond, I pat the last bulkhead frame of the ship in passing.

  Farewell, NACS Intrepid CV-1941. May you die of old age in the decommissioning docks thirty years from now.

  Gateway Station is the main hub for all military traffic from and to Earth and Luna. It’s an orbital base and spaceport rolled into one huge, hulking structure, perpetually suspended in high orbit. There’s a constant stream of people and material passing through this station, and it has been in need of an overhaul since well before I even joined the service.

  It’s a long hike from the outer ring where the carriers dock to the main concourse where I can claim a seat on a Luna-bound personnel shuttle. I walk through the familiar narrow corridors toward the central part of the station, swimming with the crowds of people going in the same direction. Whenever a carrier docks, hundreds of people end up clogging the same narrow intersections on Gateway at the same time, and it takes forever to get anywhere.

  The main concourse is as crowded as I’ve ever seen it. There are fleet crews and Spaceborne Infantry troopers everywhere, most of them in the Class A smocks that are required wear for transfers to a new duty station. I take a quick visual survey and notice that most of them are junior enlisted personnel, likely fresh out of Basic and heading for Fleet School or SI’s Infantry School. Many of them are wearing the same unsure expression I undoubtedly had on my face when I stepped off the shuttle and onto Gateway for the first time. As I pass through the crowd, I notice some of the new privates glancing at the modest collection of ribbons and badges on my Fleet Arm Class A smock and the scarlet beret on my head.

  I elbow my way to the main row of Transportation Coordinator booths on the main concourse, where I stand in line behind half a platoon of SI troopers. When my turn comes, I step up to the booth and hand over my military ID for the desk specialist to scan.

  “Where to, Sergeant?” the specialist asks, his gaze flicking from the screen of his terminal to the scarlet beret I have now stuffed underneath the left shoulder board of my uniform. The color is an ancient privilege—combat controllers are one of the few occupational specialties allowed a beret color other than the standard Homeworld Defense green, Fleet Arm black, or Spaceborne Infantry maroon. It’s a hard-earned badge of office, but it does tend to make one stick out in a crowd.

  “I need to hop up to Luna for a few days,” I say. “Visiting an old friend in Fleet School.”

  “Shuttles to Luna are fleet priority until Saturday,” the specialist says, not the least bit apologetic. “You want to go up there before then, you need to have valid orders for Luna.”

  “Well, crap. That’s five days from now. Don’t make me waste half my leave in the TPU.”

  “Sorry, Sarge. You can see that the place is popping at the rivets right now. All three recruit depots just let out a new batch of trainees this morning, and we’re hauling them up to Luna as fast as we can. Come back Saturday and I’ll get you on a shuttle, but right now every seat
is fleet priority.”

  “Can you get me down Earthside at least?”

  “Down to Earth? Sure. I have twenty empty shuttles going back every hour to haul up new people. Where do you want to go?”

  “Closest spaceport to Greater Boston, I guess.”

  “That would be Cape Cod HDAS. Hang on, let me check what’s going down that way.”

  He taps the screen of his terminal a few times while I swallow my disappointment at the delay of my reunion with Halley. I had planned to go up to Luna before visiting Mom, but now it looks like I have to flip my schedule around if I don’t want to be stuck here on Gateway for a few days.

  “Ah, here we go. Shuttle FA-2992, 1700 hours. Check with the loadmaster at lock Alpha Three-Niner.”

  “Thank you, Specialist.”

  I step away from the counter and shoulder my furlough bag again. It’s 1540 hours right now, which gives me over an hour to fight my way across Gateway to personnel lock A39. Mom’s scheduled MilNet access day is not until the weekend, and I have no other way to get in touch with her to let her know I’m coming down to Earth early, but I have her new address, and I can use all transportation networks free of charge. It’s been five years since I last set foot on my homeworld, but I very much doubt that it has changed so much that I can’t find my way around without an escort.

  Between the time I step off the shuttle at Cape Cod HDAS and the time I arrive at South Station in the middle of the Boston metroplex, I get stopped four times by various military police patrols. Every time, they scan my ID to verify my “ON LEAVE” status. The military presence is dense, even in the civvie section of the transit system. There are armed MPs at just about every entrance and intersection, and in every train along the way. Five years ago, the MP venturing out into the civilian world carried electric crowd-control sticks and nanoflex handcuffs. Now they carry those and sidearms and submachine guns besides. The magazines of the submachine guns are made of translucent plastic, and the rounds stacked up inside of them are standard infantry issue: armor-piercing, dual-purpose antipersonnel rounds.