by Dan Abnett
"Falk?"
One of the specialists had approached him. He was seriously tall, and bulked out by his harness plates. The high and tight made his head seem over-large.
"You Falk?" he asked.
"Yes."
The specialist held out his hand.
"Renn Lukes, payload specialist. I'm going to be your buddy."
THREE
The hopters blatted downcountry, low and determined, riding the rush of their howling chop-wash.
Through the open side door, Falk watched their shadow chasing them across the terrain, matching them in a perfect parallel trajectory, sometimes big, as volcanic crags thrust up, sometimes flickering in the salt-gorse, sometimes abruptly small and distant as low dune basins dropped away.
Lukes re-checked Falk's harness.
"Don't want you falling out," he said. His voice, halfdrowned by the fan-jets, echoed itself with a tinny delay via the com-plug in Falk's left ear. The payload specialist's voice was being chased by its own fuzzy shadow, just like the hopter.
There were eight other SOMD servicemen in the hold space, and two other correspondents. One was a technology reporter from thInc, a beardy little nuisance called Jeanot. The other was green hiker girl.
Lukes finished another stow check, and crossed the deck with the spread gait of a man inured to swell and pitch. He used overhead grip rails with unconscious ease, straphanging like a commuter.
"What can I tell you?" he asked.
Falk shrugged.
Lukes buckled in beside him.
"Major Selton says we should answer all your questions, demonstrate practice, give you the talk-around."
"That's why we're here," said Falk.
Lukes smiled and pinched his fingers and thumb together gently like they were an adjustable wrench.
"You don't have to shout," he said. "I can hear you fine."
"Sorry."
"You want to know about the bird?" Lukes offered. "Standard SOMD gunship and workhorse. We call them Boomers."
"C440 Avery Boreal," Jeanot cut in from his seat nearby. "Quad-engined utility and assault lifters, affectionately known as 'Boomers' or 'Boombirds', a basic retool of the long-serving C400 platform with new-generation instrumentation packages and dermetic-weave six-ply fuselage sheathing. Fabricated by GEO and LowmannEscaper Systems under licence from Avery Daimler Eiser. Forty thousand pound capacity. Top speed two hundred seventy-five knots."
Lukes laughed heartily.
"There's almost no point you being here," Falk said to Jeanot.
"You know your stuff," said Lukes, still amused.
"Test me," Jeanot laughed back. "What else do you want to know? Range is nine-thirty nmi, rate of climb is twentytwo hundred feet per minute, disc loading is sixteen pounds per square foot. All home-standard figures, of course. This is the Egress variant with the boosted–"
"No," said Falk.
They both looked at him.
"It's the Echo version. Those aren't Lycoming plants. The nacelles are too bulked up. They're T490 Northrop cold fusion units."
"Good eye," said Lukes, laughing again.
"Good engines," said Falk.
"You were hiding your inner nerd," chuckled Lukes.
"Unlike some," said Falk. He returned Jeanot's toxic glare and mouthed fuck you.
Outside, it was hard to see far. The sky was the colour and texture of steel wool, and it felt like they were swathed in dusty heat. You could see how hot the day was, how close.
You could see how dreary and endless the land was under the skipping, flickering shadow in mindless pursuit.
They set down at Mitre Sands, on a mesa above the camp strip. As the jets whined down to rotor stall, they de-bussed with their heads down.
Scarves of dust trailed the air. The sky was diffused heat and sour light, too hot, too bland. Falk slipped out his glares and put them on. He keyed the snapshot function on the left arm so that he could blink-record photo notes as and when.
The light felt abrasive on his face. There was a prickle of storm static that he could taste on top of the grit in his mouth. The sky over the flat hill was simultaneously too big and too close. It was intimidating them with a ski mask on. He wanted to cough and spit to clear the dust from his throat, but felt self-conscious. Spitting somehow seemed too provocative and disrespectful. Falk decided it was the bullying sky he was cowed by, not the virile SOMD servicemen.
Desert blurds, white as bleached bone and as big as his hand, chittered by. He brushed himself down, hoisted his carrypack, and blinked off a few of shots while everybody caught up. He got a couple of nice snaps of the boomers parked in a row, and two of green hiker girl bending over to do up her laces. The saved images stayed on the inside of his glare lenses for a moment before fading.
They went down the slope into the camp. It was a village of crate-and-create box huts and reflatable hardskin store domes. Dust blow had scuffed all the surface paint. SOMD staffers were waiting to greet them. Falk could see a row of Fargos and other roller rides parked beyond the genny shed and the uplink masts. At the defensive points of the camp strip, SOMD gunners manned autohunt gun carriages. Falk watched one reposition, plodding on its stocky tortoise legs. The fat muzzle shrouds of its four mated pipers had been painted white to reduce their profile against the sky.
Selton went to meet the camp rep and they started to chat. Another officer directed the media party and their SOMD buddies towards a sideless aluminium frame hut where materiel boxes were stacked under netting.
"Time to plate you," Lukes said to Falk. "What do you wear? A thirty-six?"
"Forty, forty-two," said Falk. Did Lukes think he was some kind of shrimp?
Lukes looked at him. "Maybe we start with a thirtyeight. It's got to fit tight, or it won't stop a freeking® thing."
The servicemen started to unpack body armour and torso rigs from the boxes. The kit was putty coloured the same as theirs, but it had "PRESS" printed in giant block white across the chests and shoulder blades. Falk wondered if they should have just cut to the chase and printed on the words "aim here" instead. Lukes helped him strap up.
"Marblehead really a firezone, or is this to lend authentic flavour?" Falk asked as he adjusted the waist fasteners.
"It can be lively," Lukes replied. "Probably won't be, but returning media observers to Lasky with sucking chest wounds because we didn't insist they wear rigs doesn't play well."
"Has that happened?"
"No, because we insist they wear rigs."
"You're US, right?"
Lukes nodded.
"How far into your SO attachment are you?"
"Year two of a four-year tour. Most of us are US, but there's a great Chinese brigade up at Thompson Ten."
"I wondered if we would get any Bloc forces in our escort."
Lukes grinned.
"It's always a possibility," he said.
"But?"
"The possibility is technical. In practice, certain unspoken policies apply."
"Bloc forces on SO attachment would not supply cover for US media on Eighty-Six?"
"I said the policies were unspoken. I don't make them. I don't speak them."
"Is this a fight against Bloc forces?" Falk asked.
Lukes took back the gloves he'd just passed to Falk and exchanged them for a smaller pair.
"Anti-corporate paramilitary forces are staging armed resistance to the territorial interests of the United Status," he said. "The Settlement Office Military Directorate has been engaged to police and contain the dispute."
"That sounds like something you read off a prompter."
"Ain't it a bitch when the truth comes as no surprise?" Lukes replied. He slapped Falk on the back. "You're done."
Falk flexed his shoulders and circled his arms.
"Good," he said. "I told you. Forty-two."
"That's a thirty-six," said Lukes.
• • •
The rollers had their engines running ready, throbbing idle revs into
the morning heat. Most of the rides were big sixwheel Fargo models spray-jobbed with tundra paint mottle, but there were two small Smartkart All-ways that would act as follow cars. Lukes led Falk to the front Fargo and showed him his seat. The specialist was carrying his M3A on a mesh sling over his right shoulder. The weapon seemed to sport an unnecessarily complex cluster of tactical optics on the top rail. The muzzle shroud covering the emitter's tube looked grotesquely wide, like a section of black plastic drainpipe.
Falk discovered he had been placed behind Major Selton, who was strapped into the centreline command seat.
"The general wisdom seems to be that the paramilitaries are landgrabbers," he remarked.
"It's a time-worn story, and Eighty-Six isn't the first settlement to experience the problem," she replied. "It won't be the last."
"What is it? Independence? Rejection of US dominion? Territorial ethics? Legal right to worship?"
"That's quite a list," she said over her shoulder, busy listening to her com-plug while she addressed her dropdown tactical display.
"It could be longer," said Falk. "A source told me that the Reserve Bank had reneged on the agreed scale for parcel subsidies for first- and second-generation settlers."
"Not true," she said.
"I also heard that mineral rights had been revised and cut to a one hundred and one year review."
"That is true," she said, "but hardly material. The chances of any parcel tenant losing their mineral rights after review is very small. The review period has really just been reset to assist with the SO's ongoing resource audit. The only circumstances in which a parcel tenant would forfeit their mineral rights at point of review would be if the lode involved fell within the remit of a Strategic Significance Order."
"Well, I also heard–" he began.
"How long does this list get, Mr Falk?" she asked him, smiling. "Just so I can block out my afternoon."
He held her look.
"I guess it'll get longer and longer all the while the specific nature of the dispute remains vague. Speculation grows wild, especially since this is the first full-scale shooting war to take place post-globally since settlement began. That comes with the words big deal stamped on it."
"If this is what a full-scale shooting war looks like," said Selton, "we haven't got much to worry about. This is a minor armed dispute. I don't think it's the big story you think it is. We've got it contained. It'll be over in a couple of months."
"You don't think it's the big story I think it is, or you don't think it's the big story us media types think it is?"
"I meant the latter, Mr Falk," she replied. "Why, is your imagination particularly feverish?"
Something crackled in her ear. She signalled the driver up front and they started to roll. The Fargo immediately began to lurch and rumble over the rough terrain. It felt and sounded like every single one of the fat tyres had blown and shredded.
"Everyone always wonders about the Central Bloc," Falk said.
Selton shot him a glance. He couldn't tell if it was a nervous look or a pitying one.
"The Cold War's been cold for nearly three hundred years, Falk. As we move out and expand, all it ever does is get colder and colder. Hard space sucks all the warmth out of it. We were at close quarters when it started, sharing one world, and still it started cold. It must be approaching heat death by now."
"Poetic. Can I quote you?"
"Sure. We've put plenty of space between us, Falk. Literally. The US, the Bloc, the Chinese, everyone's got room to breathe, to develop. No one's treading on anyone else's toes any more. No one gets to seem like a bad neighbour. There's no reason for war, cold or otherwise."
"But you'd agree," said Falk, "if we suddenly found one, that would be a huge hairy deal?"
"None hairier," she replied, flashing her eyebrows at him. "But that is not the situation on Eighty-Six. It's a local settlement dispute with disaffected paramilitaries."
"Where do the paramilitaries get their arms from?" asked green hiker girl from the bucket seat behind Falk. Falk hadn't realised she'd been listening.
Selton said something in reply, then turned to check something on her display's terrain scanner.
"What did she say?" green hiker girl asked over the thunder of the engines.
"I think she said 'that's not material'," Falk replied.
FOUR
A short distance out of Mitre Sands, on the open track, the Fargos rose up on their suspension and went what Lukes called "long-legged". Lifting the hull and broadening the chassis frame made for superior clearance and weight distribution, and the extended footprint boosted stability. The ride got appreciably smoother.
Through the dust-worn side window, Falk watched the All-ways riding out wide alongside them across the stone scrub, lifting plumes of dust like foam wakes. The chase cars were light and fast. Sunlight flashed off the glares of the shavehead manning the heavy-gauge pintle mount.
Mountains sulked to the west of them like a grey barn wall. For an hour, the cloudcover came and went like timelapse footage: cloud boil, sharp sun breaks, cloud boil again. Over the shared com system, Selton drew their attention to a pair of the big, rare tundra grazers, turning on the thermals, but Falk didn't get to the window in time and all he saw were sun dogs.
He was uncomfortable in his seat. It was tight, and the hard form-mould transmitted every bump and vibration to his ass. His back and his right hip began to ache.
Green hiker girl was writing something on a clutch tablet.
"This your first zone posting?" he asked her, trying to reboot things.
"I'm thirty-one," she replied.
He gave her "quizzical".
"Are we playing Respond To One Question With The Answer To Another?" he asked.
"I'm not playing anything with you, period," she replied. She returned to her work.
"The longer I spend with you," he said, "the more I sense I'm getting to know the real you."
She looked up at him again. He considered himself thick-skinned, but the contempt in her eyes came as a surprise.
"I have a horrible feeling," she said, "that someone once told you that you were charming, and you believed them."
Marblehead was an ore town that had been seeded about fifty years before. The first-gen pop, according to Selton, had been mostly Chinese and Portuguese, though that had diluted as the town's prosperity had grown. The place had secured major contracts to supply ore for the construction industry, mainly blue metal aggregate for precast concrete mixes, though it also quarried quality materials for facing and dressing. The extractors of Marblehead had made a significant contribution to the rise of Shaverton.
Marblehead had been one of the flashpoints in the early phase of the dispute. Production had cut back as the SOMD restricted transport and conveyance. A lot of the pop had drained out in the previous nine months.
Selton told them that the op profile was to meet with a Forward Patrol Group, conduct a security appraisal and then extract before nightfall. Falk was pretty sure that was just a bunch of rugged-sounding terms that actually meant a pretend wargame exercise with added show-and-tell.
Approaching the town, now driving on a hardpan roadway, they dropped their profile again, and ran low. The All-ways tucked in close. One zipped ahead, taking point.
"Stay buttoned up," Selton said into her mic. Their speed had decreased. "Authority given for weapons live. Commence standard sweep and target sampling."
There was a disconcerting noise of motor gearing in the roof above them. The autohunt turret mount on the Fargo's cabin top activated and began to traverse.
They entered a long incline, a winding ribbon road that followed the side of a valley down to the town limits. The place looked nondescript, dirty and dead, not so much a township as row after row of ugly precast buildings dumped on waste ground waiting to be shipped out on flatbeds to permanent homes. Places were shuttered and boarded, screened by chainlink and mesh sheeting, painted with pollution, stained by sunlight and fi
nished off with the fine detail of graffiti scrawled by the bored, the indolent, the dispossessed, the township youth, the out-of-a-job migrants, the contract-less miners. East of the town were the vast land scars of the open-cast mines and the quarries, lunar landscapes of step-sided pits like negative spaces created by pressing ziggurats tip-down into soft clay. Each pit was big enough to hold the town itself. Spoil heaps and outfill had formed new mountains. Rusty orange bulk excavators, dump trucks and mass conveyer assemblies made it look like a sand box abandoned by children for fear of rain. The quarries were barer, their sides scraped back to pale, grained rock, like exposed bone.