by Dan Abnett
• • •
Fred was up. Falk could see the little tallow disk over the battery pens. The rain had stopped, but the wind was up, and it sent little dark thumbprints of cloud scudding across the moon. It was so quiet, Falk could hear the Chinese whisper of the windfarm up the hill, and the ocean beyond it, trying to shush the whirring mills.
On and off, the voices kept him company. He got used to their unnatural, blunt-ended word-sounds, then suddenly became sick of them again. He wondered if it was Bloom, hurt and bewildered, chuntering on in the back room of his head. During the fight in the fields, Bloom's training and skills had come to the fore and taken over, like habit, like muscle memory, unbidden. They had been right there, under the surface, waiting for the extreme stresses of a firefight to provide the perfect trigger conditions. Stress and adrenaline had made the conflicted relationship between his body and minds switch to pure instinct.
Luckily, those automatic instincts had come from Bloom, not Falk.
Huckelbery had organised a rota to watch the post's perimeter. Mindful of Bloom's wound, he had put Bloom in the first set to catch some sleep, but Falk couldn't lie down.
"You should rest," said Huck, man to man, aside from the others.
"I'm too buzzed," Falk replied. "I'll just take it slow and quiet for a bit, see if that brings me down to a place where I can catch some zeds."
Huck nodded.
"Headshot or not," he said, "you're no fucking use to me if you're spazzed out with fatigue, okay?"
He said it like a joke, but he wasn't joking. Falk wasn't about to explain that he didn't want to sleep because he wasn't convinced he'd ever wake up again.
He wandered around the meeting house and the adjoining rooms for a while. In the land registry office, he turned on a desk lamp, made a little pool of yellow light and studied the satlink projector for a while. He had a halfcocked notion that it might run off an entirely separate communication net, and therefore afford them the means to bypass the jamming and get a call out. The system was live and separate, but there was no signal. Either the weather or the opposition had thoroughly closed down all link systems – radio, digital, orbital direct – and Falk's money wasn't on the weather.
He opened one of the metal drawer cabinets and selected some of the big-format territory maps for the Eyeburn area. He wanted to get a feel for the lie of the neighbourhood, and it occurred to him that the local surveyors and developers might have more up-to-date mapping than the files they'd been given at Lasky. He looked at composite views of the whole area. Large-scale, from ocean up to the caldera, the length of the highway, the limits of Antrim, Furlow Pits and Marblehead. Furlow Pits was another township, maybe four times the size of Eyeburn, up in the geo-belt of the coastal range and the caldera. Antrim was a proper town, a mill and pressing town, the bullseye of a dartboard-dot cluster of mining complexes. It was also the best part of six hundred miles away at the end of the highway. Might as well have been the moon.
Marblehead, then, was a distant galaxy, all the way over to the east. Going to Marblehead on that excursion had been one of the most insulting wastes of time Lex Falk had ever had to endure, on top of which it had been a depressing, crap-hole dump. He felt pretty certain he was currently prepared to kill in return for being transported there immediately.
He pored over more local, larger-scale maps on a lightbox, studying the layout of the station, Eyeburn Slope, the field system, the depot, the junction and the intersection of the highway. There was an open-cast mine to the east, in the foothills, and another, a smaller one, just north of it. There were also individual farms and dwellings away from the main settlements, isolated private estates on private purchase land, all part of the greater community.
He took out his glares. It seemed sensible to record the maps to be on the safe side. Once again, the Mil-grade functions of the glares befuddled him. Bloom wasn't around to show him how to work them. Falk was on his own, fumbling around with only his familiarity with civilian models to guide him. How could snapshot be so difficult to select?
The glares had belonged to somebody else. He hadn't really thought about that before. He'd found them on the deck of the boomer where they had been left or, more likely, dropped. They had belonged to another member of Team Kilo, or to one of the bird's crewmembers. He remembered having to clear all sorts of saved snaps and eye junk away when he first used them, the residue of the previous user.
Here it all was again. All the crap he'd shoved aside. When he finally found snapshot, it opened the images that had been saved. Dozens of them: candid shots of SOMD buddies clowning around, laughing, toasting, posing with weapons while looking mean and moody, in groups at parties. He found the folder heading. Username Smitts, Lemar. Lemar Smitts was a member of Kilo Three, and Kilo Three had definitely been on the bird when Cicero brought it back to the weather station, because Martinz had been a member of Three too.
Falk looked at the snaps again. There was Martinz, beer-effect in hand. There were Valdes and Goran, Caudel looking tough with a thumper, Jay and Clodell. There was Bigmouse, and there was Preben, laughing in sunlight, a laugh Falk had yet to see. There were Stabler and Bloom.
His own face, but not his own face. Nestor Bloom and Karin Stabler in a bar somewhere, happy together, acting up for the camera, Bloom's arm around Stabler's shoulders, both of them alive. The sight of Stabler hurt. It put a little cramp in his belly.
Falk swallowed hard, felt Bloom's subterranean pain stirring. He flicked on to the next frame, the next, the one after.
Along with the snapshots, there was a video file. Forty seconds long. Falk keyed play.
The interior of the boombird cabin, the view saturated with daylight because the POV was low down, on the deck, looking up sideways towards the side windows and one of the open side hatches, all of them blinding, Rothko-esque slabs of white light. Zero shake. The user was not moving, and neither was the bird. The bird was on the ground. Two figures got into the cabin using the hatch, crouched down, spoke to each other. They gave a better idea of the user's position. To have recorded this, Smitts must have been lying down on the cabin floor, lying down on his back, turned to the side.
The clip was nothing. Forty seconds of overlit nothing, where nothing happened, the focus was poor, and the ambient noise on the soundtrack lousy. The crouching figures, silhouettes, spoke to each other for about twenty seconds, then got up, turned to camera, came towards the lens. Then there was a quick, confused motion and the playback ended.
Falk selected erase to dump the clip, but there had been something about it. He played it again. This time he paused when the crouching figures got up and turned to camera. For a second or two, they blocked the overwhelming white light of the doorway, eclipsing it, and became more than silhouettes. One was larger than the other. It was fuzzy, but the resolution was improved. A man and a woman. Neither of them was wearing SOMD kit.
Falk didn't know the man. But the woman was the girl who had shot him.
The cramp came back. It kicked him in the belly so hard he gasped out loud, doubled up. It was fear, the twisting snake, but it was physical hurt too. Clamped with an inexpressible discomfort that made him feel like he was going to vomit, he pushed back from the lightbox, fists balled, mouth wide, no sounds coming out. He dislodged one of the map folders and it fell on the floor. He couldn't call out.
He managed to get to his feet, folded over. There was a small couch in the corner of the office, covered with a threadbare throw. He shuffled over, fell on to it, rolled onto his back. The cramp squeezed again, then ebbed, and his knees relaxed, dropping his legs flat.
The pain wasn't really in his stomach. He realised that. He lay on the couch, flat on his back, almost paralysed, understanding full well that the pain, the real pain, was in his head. His cramping, spasming body was just another symptom of his brain dying. Bloom's physical brain, with his mind overlaid, dying together. Maybe from a bleed, maybe from a brewing infection, maybe from some kind of feedback shit
storm cocktail mix of the gunshot trauma and the remote position transfer.
The reversed voices gossiped in the shadows around him, muttering, bickering.
The office door opened and light slanted in. Huckelbery peered around the door. He'd heard the folder hit the floor. Falk couldn't move. He couldn't speak or lift his head. Huckelbery looked in and presumed he saw Bloom finally catching some sleep. Satisfied, he went back out and closed the door quietly.
The pain and the tonic crash drifted away over the course of about an hour, during which Falk may have slept briefly. He sat up when he finally realised he could. He was thirsty, and he could smell coffee or hot chocolate being prepared nearby.
He played the clip again on his glares, slowed it down, replayed it, zoomed in, enhanced it, replayed it. Smitts, he became convinced, was dead or dying when the clip was recorded. He had been sprawled on the deck of the boomer, in the doorway. He'd probably been shot. The glares had started recording accidentally, or Smitts had been trying to record something surreptitiously, playing dead.
Even enhanced, there still wasn't much to see or hear. The man and woman got in, crouched down. They spoke to each other. It was hard to resolve the exchange because of the ambient background. A few words, not English. The girl was definitely the one who had shot Bloom. Falk played and replayed the moment she got up and faced him against the light. He could see the patched tear along her scalp, the dried blood. If someone had told him she was Central Bloc, he wouldn't have been surprised. There was something about her features, her hair, her manner. She was petite but strong, forceful, undaunted. The man was big, dark-haired, his face not clear in any shot or partial. From his build, he was military. There was density, a core strength to him.
He listened to their conversation four, five times. She was telling him something. Falk tried to discern the actual words, tried to fish them out of the hiss-murmur soup of the open-air recording. What was she saying?
The business at the end of the clip, on repeated play, became more apparent. They were getting up and coming over because they had realised that Smitts was alive and watching. The last jumbled seconds of the clip were the motion and disruption of them grabbing hold of Smitts to pull him out of the boomer. It shook the glares off. End clip. That must have been how the glares wound up on the cargo deck.
What were they saying? Falk could almost lip-read, except they weren't speaking English.
He got up, and went off to trace the coffee smell. Stepping out of the office, he found Preben and Rash in the hallway, talking with Masry.
Preben looked around at him.
"We think we've got a plan," he said.
TWENTY-THREE
"We're not walking out of here," said Masry.
"No one's walking anywhere," replied Huckelbery. He was eating soya beans out of a self-heating can using a plastic fork. He was standing too. Soldiers did a lot of standing-up eating.
"That's not what I mean," the PO replied. "Come dawn, it'll be a whole day since we inserted. How long before SO Command considers us overdue? How long before they realise this is all freeked® up?"
Huckelbery shrugged. Masry looked around the room at the faces of the other men. Falk didn't say anything. There was the leftover chill of a long night in the community hall, a pre-dawn dampness with a thin after-scent of Insect-Aside. Small blurds had found their way in, and were clumsily orbiting the lights.
"Another day? Another two?" asked Masry. "A week? Then what will they do? Send more teams in to find out what the freek® happened to the first lot? Doubtful."
Valdes made his dismissive face.
"The SO won't hang us out to dry, man. No way," he said. He was leaning against the wall bars, arms folded. "They'll get full-gain sat overview, a good look-see, then punch in a payback assault to scorch these motherfuckers. Show them our fucking A game. No messing."
Goran and Clodell nodded. Rash was impassive. The other members of Hotel Four were outside watching the perimeter, but Falk was pretty sure that if they'd been present, they'd have been doing their best to mimic their boss's expression. Hotel Four was a tight-knit pack. It wasn't clear whether that was due to trust and cohesion, or a painful lack of individual imagination. Rash was clearly a demanding squad leader.
"Suppose you're right," Masry said to Valdes. "How long will that take? Three, four days? We won't last that long. We've got to get out of here, and we can't do that on foot."
"So what?" asked Huckelbery. He licked bean sauce off his lip and twirled his fork absently, describing the spin of rotor blades. "We fly back out?"
"My boom's junked," said Masry, "and we don't know what happened to the Juliet ride. But Kilo's is right up the hill here."
"Up at the station," Preben said.
"It's taken hits," said Falk. "Mouse and I were there when it got shot up. Hardbeam hits."
Masry nodded.
"Yeah, it's dinked. But it's not dead."
"I told Masry about the damage we saw it taking, Nes," Bigmouse said. "I told him, some hull and screen smacks. The landing gear was the worst bit."
There were big, dark circles under Bigmouse's eyes, rings left behind by pain that was as clear as the marks a coffee cup left on a tabletop. The blunt-force trauma he'd taken to the chest was clearly sapping everything he'd got. Falk could see bruising spreading up his collar bones and throat, beyond the limits of the elasticated bandages and press-on analgesic patches.
"Boomers are built tough," said Masry.
"It took hits," Falk repeated.
"They're tough," Masry said. "There is good reason to believe the Kilo bird can get us in the air and get us home. A freek® of a lot faster than on foot. Faster than any ground transport we could rustle up."
"And you'd be flying it?" Falk asked.
"Yeah, okay, I'm not a pilot," replied Masry. "But I've been on boomers six years. I know my way around. And all POs are air-grade rated on control systems in case of emergency operations. Like if they have to take over as a second seat, something like that. I think this qualifies as a freeking® emergency, don't you?"
"I guess," said Falk.
"So, yeah, I can fly the thing. It may not be the smoothest ride you've ever taken, but I can do it. Good enough?"
Falk looked away. The high windows of the community hall were turning very slightly pale. Dawn in under an hour. They were going to rush this decision. There was no time to think it over.
"We need to do it," said Preben. "We need to try it."
"Shut up," said Falk.
"What the freek® are you so afraid of?" Masry snapped at Falk. "What is your freeking® problem?"
"You," replied Falk. He felt a twinge of cramp for a second. It passed. "You're clutching at straws, Masry. That doesn't make for good choices."
"What? You don't want to get out of here?" Masry asked.
Falk had been leaning against a stack of chairs. He straightened up, faced Masry and pointed to the black drillhole in his bruised cheek.
"What do you suppose this is, Masry?" he asked. "How badly do you suppose I need medical attention? How completely do you suppose I want to get out of here?"
Masry held his gaze for a second, then, uncomfortable, looked away.
"I want to get out," said Falk. "I do not want to mount some kind of half-assed raid on a position we know is under insurgent control just on the off-chance they'll let us borrow a fucking Boreal."
"What do you suggest we do then, Bloom?" asked Rash.
"I don't know," said Falk. "I don't know what I suggest. Stay low and keep out of trouble? I have no idea. I'm keen to hear any viable alternatives. I just know I don't want to go charging into a guaranteed firefight just because Masry thinks he can magically fly us away home."
"Yeah," said Huckelbery, slowly and quietly, deep in thought. He put his can down on a table, fork leaning out of it. "We've got to be sensible. We've got to be smart. There aren't enough of us to go doing something rash. No offence, Rash."
Rash had clearly hear
d that gag a billion too many times.
Falk waited, rubbed his eyes. He looked at Bigmouse, and saw that Bigmouse was staring right back at him. Falk could read the fear buried in Bigmouse's features, the stress of simply staying upright. Private First Class Waylon Wakes "Bigmouse" Mauskin was counting on Nestor Bloom. He was counting on his team leader to get him out of the shit and back to safety. Bigmouse wasn't going to ask. That wasn't his style. He wasn't going to say it out loud. But he could hope and he could will it to happen. He needed it.
"Fuck it," Falk said under his breath. He limped across to Huckelbery.
"Look," he said, "maybe if we do it really tight. Keep our options open. Move in slow, take a look, size it up. Have ourselves a fallback position in case it turns to shit. Go in that way. Get the fuck out if it's not viable, go to ground. No heroics."