Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection

by Chris Pourteau

  After a couple of breaths, Mary said, “I suspect that’s a little like leaving the military. You can muster out, but you never stop sitting with your back to the wall.”

  Logan’s voice sounded cheerless when he said, “Too true.” He stood up and began pacing again. It was a short walk in the narrow bow.

  “So, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Ah, there’s that directness. Have I told you how much I like that quality about you?”

  “I think you just did. For the second time.”

  A flit of moonlit gray at his temples showed her he was nodding. “I don’t know you from Eve,” he said suddenly.

  “She’s a lot older. Also, I’ve never trusted snakes.”

  Logan cracked a genuine smile at that. He settled again on the bow’s gunwale.

  “My people are caught between—not just a rock and a hard place—everything. They scrape for every scrap they can find. Unlike the Amish, they produce nothing, so Transport sees them as useless parasites on the system. At worst, we’re a threat because, well, we must want what they have, right? That’s the way the people in power always think. They fear covetousness because they got where they are by being covetous. The Amish don’t trust us, but then the Amish don’t trust anyone, really. ‘Love everyone, trust no one.’ And who can blame them? And TRACE…” He let it hang there, an invitation for her to say something and make him believe the resistance was different somehow, more noble perhaps in its motivations.

  “Part of that is your reputation,” she said, not taking the bait. She didn’t like giving anyone exactly what they wanted. Doing so made her feel weak. “People think you’re cannibals. That you ambush Plain People and steal their food and take them back to your cookfires and make Pacifist Pies for supper.”

  “Only two-thirds of that is true,” said Logan sardonically. “And even that part—taking from others, just to be clear—is the exception, not the rule. But I take your point. We encourage the rumors, of course. About cannibalism.”

  Interesting, thought Mary. “Why?”

  “It isn’t obvious?” The Pittsburgh climbed over a particularly foamy rush of river water before settling down again to the comforting chugga-chugga-chugga of its engine. “Ever wanted to be left alone? So much so that you snipe and snarl at anyone who comes around you?”

  The QB turned her head away from him so he wouldn’t see the bitter grin on her face. “Never. I’m not like that. I love all mankind all the time.”

  “Yeah, well, good for you,” Logan replied bitterly, missing her sarcasm. “We don’t have that luxury. We’ve cultivated what others think of us very carefully. If people think you’ll eat them if they bother you, they tend to leave you alone. Honestly, our reputation as savages is all we’ve got.”

  Mary thought about that. Transport had weapons, personnel, technology, and a dogged desire for control. TRACE would have fallen before the Authority long ago but for luck and the SOMA’s technowizardry. She tried to weigh what it must be like to be a Wild One in that reality. Skins on your back, Stone Age weapons to hunt with, and no place to call home but whatever nature provided. She recalled the Wild Ones’ simple, stone apartments and the wild deer roasting on the fires. And how enthralled the children had been to see the soldiers in their midst. Enthralled, or simply terrified? She recalled her mirror image out of time, the girl with the defiant stare, daring the armed stranger to raise her laser rifle against them. If the captain had, what could the little warrior have done about it? Stabbed her with daggers from her young eyes? And that girl and all she knew of her family and community, every bit of it, was protected only by an illusion. A myth.

  “I see now why the guns are so important to you,” she said quietly.

  “Without them, we’ll die,” Logan said with grave surety. “Transport is eliminating anyone it perceives as a threat to its ultimate power. The Wild Ones are just rats in their grand scheme of things, but they’ve already begun moving against us, with one goal: extermination. You saw the field where Eeguls found you. And if they’ve gotten so aggressive as to come after the rats … well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the City go eventually.”

  “Go?”

  Logan sighed, the sound lost as the water shushed against the ferry. “When you have a cancer, you cut it out to save the body.”

  “Destroy the City?” Mary asked, as if saying the words could make them somehow more believable. “That’s crazy.” The sudden realization that murdering an entire city full of people wasn’t beyond Transport after all sent a shiver up the back of her neck. “Do you know this for a fact? Is Transport planning it?”

  “I used to be a spy, remember? I hear things when we scavenge. It’s not a plan, as far as I know—yet. But whispers of a Final Solution to the TRACE problem are out there. Take that intel back to your superiors, Captain. Nothing is beyond the Authority. Nothing.”

  She had always thought the same. But to destroy the City? Could even Transport be that desperate? That evil?

  The deck thumped. Mary turned her shocked face toward Hatch as he approached. She quickly put her QB mask in place. She didn’t think he’d seen.

  “Sticks says to be quiet. We’re getting close to ears friendly to Transport.”

  Logan gave him a sad smile. “Time to be a mouse, not a rat, Lieutenant?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” the captain told him. “Private joke.”

  “Ah. Well. Mouse or cockroach, take your pick. But shut up. Ma’am.” He wandered away again to leave them to their privacy and its jokes.

  “You let all your soldiers talk to you like that?” asked Logan.

  She sighed, grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts. “No. Just him.”

  “Ah…” In that one syllable, all understanding.

  “It’s not like that,” she said defensively.

  “Not anymore, I take it,” he answered with half a laugh. The water soon swallowed the sound and they were silent again for a moment.

  “We’ll get you your guns,” she whispered.

  Logan nodded but said nothing.

  Warpath

  Sticks cut the engine for their approach to the dock. Momentum carried the Pittsburgh forward, and its captain swung wide to starboard to avoid a collision. The ferry barely nudged the pier before the old man hopped across and began to tie her off.

  The lights of the City glinted off the Susquehanna a quarter mile upstream. The old dock Sticks had tied them to looked to have been abandoned for years. No homes, no farms, no lights. Just the sounds of the natural world settling down for the night.

  “The target is half a klick inside the City,” the QB reminded them as they hopped across to the pier. Stug and Bracer needed a moment to get their land legs back.

  “Are you sure this man of yours inside is reliable?” asked Hatch.

  “The distractions he has planned will pull the patrols away from the river entrance,” said Logan, as if that answered the question. “Once they’re preoccupied, we’ll go in through the sewer, like I said before.”

  “And like I said before, that still sounds—” began Stug.

  “Don’t say it again!” ordered Hatch.

  “—like a crappy plan to me.” Whatever seasickness he’d suffered onboard the Pittsburgh had evidently passed.

  As usual, the QB was short on patience and ready to move. “Let’s go.”

  Logan and B Company followed her along the river’s edge. They made sure to keep to the shadows until they reached a copse of trees from which they could observe the sewer entrance. Four large steel gates attached to chains protected the City from entrance via the river, while allowing the water and the refuse it carried to flow out.

  They waited. There was the sound of an explosion from the City’s interior. Then a second. And a third. Three different locations, each deep inside the heart of Columbia.

  Alarms wailed. Lights came up, stretching out across the river and its surrounding banks. From their current position,
they could hear the bustle of Transport troops stationed along the wall moving to high tactical alert.

  “We move,” said Logan. “Now.”

  He led them out of cover, shuffling low and hugging the river’s edge. Hatch glanced at the QB. “I guess there’s no turning back now,” he said, then ran after their ally. The infiltrators soon formed a line under the City’s wall where it met the riverbank. Searchlights passed over them as a fourth explosion erupted inside Columbia. This one sounded closer, no more than a few blocks from their current position.

  “And now…” Logan sounded like a magician willing his assistant to reappear inside an empty box.

  A screech of metal on metal made them all cringe. One of the steel gates began to ascend to their right as they stood, backs flat against Columbia’s wall. Two feet above the river’s surface, it stopped.

  “It’s not going to get any higher,” said Logan, starting to move.

  “Wait.” Hatch put a hand on Logan’s arm, forced him back against the wall. “Bracer, count it.”

  “One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi. Three-Mississippi.”

  “Hawkeye.”

  The unit’s spotter directed his omni-lens up and along the length of the wall above them. No heat sigs. No movement of any kind.

  “Nada.”

  “Can we go now?” asked Logan. “Or would you rather stay here till the guards return and actually start observing the river again?”

  “Hawkeye, take point,” ordered Stug.

  The spotter moved slowly into the chilly river. The smell was horrendous this close to the City, and the water saturated their uniforms. Bracer and Pusher went next. Holding their laser rifles above their heads, the three slipped one at a time behind the steel gate and under the City wall. Hatch and the QB brought up the rear.

  “Couldn’t you have stolen our food in August?” Bracer’s teeth chattered around the question.

  “We’ll be out soon enough,” answered Logan.

  Behind the gate, the sewer passage was lined only with dim lights. They were grateful for that. Smelling the sludge they pushed their way through was bad enough. Seeing it any better would only add to the fun.

  Logan found a ladder ascending to a gantry, and liquid filth drained off him as he hauled himself up.

  “Hurry up, Sergeant,” he said, reaching down for Stug. “We need to close it again before someone notices it’s open.”

  One by one they gained the catwalk as Logan found the manual override controls for the sewer gate. Thirty seconds later, the screeching metal was lowered back into place.

  The QB noticed her soldiers had begun wagging their heads; she felt it too. Transport jamming apparently covered the length and breadth of the City, even beneath it. “BICEs off,” she said. “Visual communication only.”

  “I sure hope the rest of your plan is sound,” said Hatch to Logan, clicking off his device. “’Cause it’s all on you now.”

  “I used to do this all the time,” said Logan. “Trust me.”

  Logan led them out of the sewer through a manhole and into a dim alley. Damp stone walls reached two stories high on either side of them. One building, the ex-TRACE spy told them, was Transport’s armory. The other was a flophouse for migrant workers from the cities of the Great Shelf, employed in Transport’s factories not far from here.

  The fall air drew a shroud of coldness around them as it funneled down the alley. “Fifteen minutes since the last explosion,” said Logan. “They’re as out of position as they’re gonna get.” They spotted no porters around the building or in the area; they must have been drawn away to deal with the bombs. Logan’s plan was working.

  The lieutenant positioned Hawkeye and Bracer on the roof of the flophouse opposite the armory’s back door, its most vulnerable spot. Without his heavy machine gun, Bracer held position with only his laser rifle and sidearm, aided by his spotter. They stood above, watching the locked back door, which was painted red as a clear message to the locals to stay away. Hawkeye tracked his omni-lens constantly left and right, up and down. When he gave the signal, Logan and the QB joined them on the roof.

  Hatch was careful to stay in the shadows, away from Transport’s security cameras. Those all-seeing eyes monitored most of the City’s roads and alleys, one more way the Authority controlled movement. He searched quietly through a trash container for camouflage, coming up with a huge cotton blanket. He cut a head-sized hole out of it, then draped it over Stug. With his broad shoulders beneath the makeshift poncho, he looked like a circus tent with a head attached. But at least the blanket masked his weapons.

  “Is this really necessary?” whined the sergeant.

  “Nope. Well, unless you want to survive the first ten seconds of this little play. Then yep.”

  Stug wrinkled his nose. “It smells awful.”

  “That’s okay, so do you. Think of it as an opportunity to practice your method acting.”

  “Hey, look on the bright side, Sarge,” said Pusher. “You get to punch people in the first act.”

  The sergeant smiled. “Glass is half full, then.”

  Mindful of the security camera scanning the back entrance, Hatch and Pusher quickly crossed the alleyway, setting themselves up opposite Stug some thirty feet from the red door. They would cover the back entrance while Stug did his bit.

  Once in position, the lieutenant assessed the flophouse roof. The QB and Logan would be hunched down along the wall by now, preparing to leap across to the armory. Hawkeye’s omni-lens dipped once, twice, the moonlight twinkling briefly off its glass.

  All clear.

  “You’re on, Falstaff,” Hatch whispered.

  Stug splayed himself against the building in his circus poncho. Still hidden in a slice of shadow cut by the moon across the stone behind him, he waited patiently as the security camera panned across the alley. When it pointed directly away from him, Stug staggered forward.

  The camera whirred, its motion sensor tracking the monotony of the empty alley on its return arc. A jerky shadow made it stop. Stug’s irregular mass slowly took shape as he moved into the light.

  “Citizen,” came the computerized voice, impossibly huge, from the small speaker below the camera eye. “You have entered a restricted area. By order of the Transport Authority, you will leave immediately or face prosecution by a duly appointed magistrate.”

  Stug continued his jaunty progress. He took note of the order, jerked to the left, and fell into a mass of refuse bins. He lifted himself unsteadily to his feet and, mouthing gibberish, resumed his progress down the alley.

  “Citizen, this facility is off-limits,” said the voice. “Once before a magistrate, representation for your defense will not be provided. You will be tried for sedition for failing to leave a restricted area. This is your final warning.”

  Stug reached the door. He struck the reinforced metal with his fists.

  Pound. Pound. Pound.

  Then he began to cry-sing in the slurring voice of desperate loneliness only a drunken male can muster. “I shee a red door … and I hwant to pain’it black.”

  Pound. Pound. Pound.

  “Lemme in, mothuh!” he shouted. “Pleashhhhhh!”

  Pound. Pound. Pound.

  “I wanna see Jonah! Mothuhhhhhh!” His baritone voice reverberated against the surrounding stone, a church bell’s echo in an expansive belfry.

  Tumblers turned. Stug staggered back six inches so he was no longer leaning on the red metal. With a creak of its heavy hinges, the armory door swung open. Two Transport soldiers stood ready, laser rifles trained on the intruder.

  “Wha? You’re hnot my mothuh.” He looked beyond them. “Where’sh Jonah? Where’sh my dog?”

  “I don’t know where you think you are, fat man, but this isn’t your home,” barked one of the soldiers.

  With a flit of his eyes, Stug noted the lieutenant’s insignia across the pocket of the man’s uniform. You’re the one I need to worry about, then, he thought.

  “But I guess y
ou could say we’re your keepers now,” sneered the lieutenant. “Down on the ground, lard ass.”

  Stug affected a delayed reaction of hurt, affront, and detached ignorance, all at the same time. “That wasshn’t very nishe.”

  “Christ, he stinks, Lieutenant.” The other soldier was younger, likely not long out of Transport’s boot camp for porters.

  “Vermin like this always do,” replied the officer. Returning his attention to the swaying circus freak in front of him, the officer shouted, “Ground! Now!”

  The drunk trespasser suddenly slipped and fell, crying out as his right knee cracked on the cement. The younger soldier instinctively moved forward, putting out an arm to try and steady the smelly bastard who’d interrupted an otherwise quiet watch.

  “No, wait!” the lieutenant warned.

  Stug threw back the poncho, easily grabbing the inexperienced soldier and pulling him off balance. As he moved, the sergeant heard Bracer take out the security camera over his head with a single laser blast, right on cue. The big man’s calves flexed as he stood, hauling the soldier in front of him off the ground, a human shield. The lieutenant’s blast took the young porter square in the back. Grunting with effort, Stug shoved the soldier’s body straight at the lieutenant, who pulled his trigger again wildly, blasting the floor.

  Stug roared like a giant chasing would-be thieves from his treasure room. He fell upon the enemy officer, who was struggling to aim at the drunken vagrant who’d become a whooping demon and charged him from the doorway. The sergeant ripped the laser rifle out of the officer’s hands and threw it behind him through the door. Terror blazed in the lieutenant’s eyes as two huge meat hooks reached down for him. Stug grabbed him by the front of his uniform, hauled him from beneath the dead trooper, then set him down on his feet, light as a kitten.

  Both men paused. The unarmed porter officer seemed confused by his sudden good fortune. Stug centered himself. It then dawned on the lieutenant what was coming, but he could only stand there, paralyzed with fascination and fear. Stug swung a haymaker that knocked his foe the length of the corridor. The fact that he’d been an officer, and a Transport officer at that, made the sergeant’s face nearly break in half with a smile.