I started up the mountain, fighting a wave of dizziness and nausea. “With my flame hood and cloak gone, I don’t have a helmet,” I whispered. “They’ll see me.”
“It’s not only you,” said Jennifer, “My cloak was destroyed and half of my chameleon skin damaged. Jihoon is the only one still masked.”
I realized then that I could see her. Half of Jennifer showed up on infrared, a dull figure in light gray, the other half smeared. We kept moving, with Jihoon taking the lead and me in the middle, Jennifer pausing every so often to look behind us and listen. An hour later the sky brightened. The slope had also steepened as we got deeper into the mountains, and there were still at least six kilometers between us and the border.
“We’re not going to make the border,” I said. “Not if daylight comes. We’ll have to risk stopping and hiding.”
Jennifer clicked in. “We’re not headed for the border; we’re headed for a tunnel.”
“What? Whose tunnel?”
“We stealth-bored infiltration tunnels through the mountain under our line, long before the Chinese arrived. Margaret told us to do it. That way we’d be able to infiltrate rear areas more easily when the Chinese reached us, but the map data isn’t uploaded into computers of patrol units, so it can’t be compromised if any of us are captured. Margaret foresaw—”
“I know,” I interrupted. “Margaret foresaw everything. She’s a saint.”
Jennifer sounded shocked. “Then you agree?”
“With what?”
“That she sits at Catherine’s side now. With God himself.”
I shook my head and wondered: How the hell could anyone lead these psychos, human or not?
“Yes,” I said. “I believe she’s at Catherine’s side. She may even have her own pool boy.” But before Jennifer could ask what a pool boy was, I changed the subject. “Can you find an entrance without your map data?”
“I don’t know. But if God is with us, I will.”
God better be with us, I thought, or I’ll pass out with pain. My shoulder got worse as the sun started to rise, bringing with it a humid heat that penetrated through the broken armor, and it had become hard to distinguish between my own sweat and the suit coolant, which had leaked all night from the broken capillaries in my undersuit. Soon I’d have to take it all off. Rather than cool me, the armor would act like an oven, its insulating layers cooking me as I sweated from the uphill hike.
There were dark moments in that retreat, some more so than others. While we kept moving forward, the thought occurred to me that even if we reached the tunnel and the safety of the line, the Chinese still had to be dealt with, and this time they wouldn’t be overconfident. They didn’t have to conduct a frontal assault. With numbers so far in excess of ours, they and the Burmese could sit back and lob plasma shells or send bomber flights over Nu Poe for as long as they wanted while we sweated it out in the tunnels and waited for an underground assault. By the time the Chinese arrived at the trenches, the Gra Jaai and everyone else would be twitching, mental train wrecks; none of them would be able to fight. And had the Gra Jaai even been trained in tunnel defense? What about the Karen? And more importantly, What had Margaret tried to stick me with, and did I really want to even think about taking the job? The thought made me reconsider my decision to stay away from the States and leave the military, an option that sent me into a depression with the idea of having to return—of having to wait between missions as I aged further, to deteriorate with the torture of passing time while Assurance eavesdropped on my mumbling. But Margaret had already shown that she had several surprises, and it was possible there was more than met the eye with the Gra Jaai and their sato leaders.
“Jennifer?” I asked. “Did Margaret have any other surprises for the Chinese? Other than infiltration tunnels and flame units?”
She stopped and stared at me, the silence making me turn to face her.
“Are you accepting the job Margaret offered?”
I tried to shrug and stifled an urge to yell with the pain. “I don’t know.”
“Then,” she said, continuing up the mountain toward me, “I don’t know either. Hurry and try to move faster; I think there is a tunnel entrance a few hundred meters from here, but there may be one or two scouts on our trail. I heard something behind us.”
“Instead of simply plugging the tunnels,” said Jennifer, “Margaret had us install coded doors so we could use them in case of emergencies.”
“You’re sure this is the spot?” I asked. I had heard the same thing Jennifer did, and it gave me the creeps—a distant crash and thud, as if someone had slipped on the loose clay to fall a short distance. “You’re sure?”
“It’s the general area.” She pointed to a large boulder on our left and a deep gully to the right, waving at the almost impenetrable bush in between. “It’s here, I just have to pinpoint it.”
She pushed into the jungle, and Jihoon and I turned, slipping in opposite directions to find hiding spots from which we could take watch. The sun was overhead now. I fought to keep from passing out and drank so much water that if we kept this up my tank would be empty within an hour, sweat dripping from under my vision hood. A huge termite mound rose from the area that I’d originally targeted as a hiding spot, making me curse. It would take a few moments to find another spot, time that I didn’t have; instead I pushed into the bushes beside the mound, lay down to cover myself with leaves and dirt so that only my eyes were exposed, and prayed that the termites would leave me alone.
Jennifer was almost noiseless. I sometimes heard her shuffle in the underbrush, but for the most part I’d have never known she was there, leaving me enough time to stare at the twin thermite grenades gripped in both hands and wonder: how the hell was this going to work? We didn’t have a flame unit now. The grenades would be our only effective weapon, and it would mean having to get close enough to use them, something I’d seen done once, and that was when both the scout and its attacker had been masked. But I had the general idea. I went over it again and again, using what I’d learned of the scouts’ construction from having seen their wreckage, imagining myself grabbing hold and jamming the grenade into a fist-sized opening at the back near their hind legs—all with one arm almost useless.
Ten minutes later, Jennifer clicked in to tell us she’d found the entrance and opened it and that we should hurry before our pursuers caught up with us. I was about to stand when the scout arrived.
My mind shifted into a whirl of terror once I realized what was happening. Something pressed into the small of my back at the same time I heard quiet servos, and an immense weight pushed me into the brush and dirt until the flex from my armor threatened to crush my stomach. Images of Phillip flickered in my imagination. Somehow being this close to a live Chinese genetic was the worst thing I could imagine, and it illustrated how some people could go mad at the sight of a spider. I wanted it off me. My brain told me to wriggle out from under it and run, that there was a chance of escaping and it would go after one of the others, so that I had to force myself to calm down because it would move off soon. But it didn’t. The scout stayed put, and from inside the thing I heard the sound of Chinese, spoken with a gurgling voice that, in turn, transformed into a quiet machine language that wouldn’t have been audible except for the fact that its foot transmitted the sound waves through my armor.
There was one thing I could do, but my brain screamed at the idea, my shoulder doubly so because I’d have to ignore the pain, and even if it worked, it could maim me beyond repair. At the last moment I decided, fuck it, dropped one grenade while biting into the other’s pin, and spat it out while shouting into my throat mic.
“Scout!”
The pressure released from my back. At that same instant I rolled over, moaning with pain, and saw the shimmering mass beside me just before I lunged for the area where its back should be; my gauntlets scraped against the scout’s ceramic back plate. Finally their fingers clicked into a slot, and I grabbed hold. The scout went
crazy. It jumped downslope and threatened to rip my shoulder apart, what remained of it, and I held on while brush and leaves whipped at my face in its effort to shake me loose. With the other hand I searched for the gap I knew should be there. We were about to head over a steep ledge when I found it, released the spoon, and jammed the grenade in—praying it would stay there as I let go, rolling through the air to land on a rock ledge with a thud. The scout continued down the mountain and a second later erupted with a pop to send a cloud of sparks and fire skyward before it disappeared into the jungle.
It was some time before I made it back to the termite mound. Millions of the things scurried over the clay and leaves, angry for having been disturbed by my movement, and I grabbed the last grenade before turning to where Jihoon should have been. My vision hood was gone. There was no way to find them on the map now, and with it had gone my throat mics so if I wanted to communicate I’d have to yell. But there were likely more out here. Fear returned with the thought, and rather than wait, I yanked the pin out and started crawling upward in the last direction I’d seen Jennifer’s dot, which may have saved my life; when the tracers leaped from the bushes behind me, instead of slamming into my skull, they cut through my left forearm so I dropped the grenade. The fuse hissed. There would only be a few seconds before it blew, and while the scout paused to aim for another burst, I kicked at the grenade to make it roll downhill, toward the shimmer where it burst into a white ball. That close, the heat singed my scalp and face to fill the air with the smell of burning hair, and the intensity forced my eyes shut while I struggled to move uphill in an attempt to get as far away from the scout and the thermite as I could. Something crashed through the bushes below me; at first I thought it was the Chinese scout moving around the thermite to get another shot but Jihoon’s scream forced my eyes back open.
“Jesus Christ!” he shrieked, and at the time I realized that I’d never heard his voice get that high. Ji repeated it over and over. The crashing noise continued, getting fainter until another grenade detonated, making me sigh with relief at the assumption that Ji had managed to kill it. I was about to go toward the sound of his voice when Jennifer slapped me on the shoulder.
“Move. Uphill. I’ll get your partner, then catch up with you to show you the way; other Chinese will come.”
“Scouts,” I said, and I must have been wounded worse than I realized because I started laughing. “Two of them. I’m not kidding, one of them walked on top of me.”
“Move!” she screamed.
I made it about fifty meters up the mountain when she found me again, but this time she carried Jihoon on her back. It took me a few seconds to see what was wrong. Ji’s left leg was gone below the knee where one of the scouts had bit it off with metal pincers, and his head lolled over her shoulder.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t be carrying him if he was.”
“Where’s the tunnel?”
She pointed with her chin. “Right in front of you.”
I turned and looked. Even then it was hard to see, but before me was a narrow crack between two boulders, from which had been carved a rock door that opened just wide enough to let someone armored through. It opened inward and I pulled myself in. The air was cool inside, and I relaxed at first, before the temperature made me feel as though I’d pass out and my body reacted with the first symptoms of shock as it started shivering. Jennifer pushed Jihoon through and then squeezed into the narrow space, urging me to move farther back and give her some room. When she shut the door, it was pitch-black.
“I’m going into shock,” I said.
“A medical unit is on its way. I made contact with Nu Poe before I came to get you.”
“I’m really tired now, Jennifer. Not scared. Just want to go to sleep.”
I felt a needlelike prick against my skin and heard the hiss of an aeroinjector. “More bots. I gave some to the other lieutenant as well, to stop the bleeding from his leg.”
“Will he make it?” I asked.
“Be quiet, Lieutenant. The tunnel is soundproofed, but I don’t know all their capabilities.”
“Damn it, Kristen,” I said, getting more and more delirious. “Call me Bug.”
ELEVEN
Escape
The first thing I noticed when I woke was that, for the moment, the pain had vanished. Remorro and Orcola sat next to me, laughing, and at first there wasn’t any sound except for dripping water as it pattered on a transparent plastic sheet that someone had draped over me to keep the rain off, and it made me wonder why they’d put me outside. But I wasn’t outside. Orcola pulled the sheet back, and overhead the distant booming of plasma artillery shook the rock around me and vibrated the hospital rack on which I rested. It confused me. I didn’t recognize anything about the small chamber in which I lay, and the two kept laughing so that I had to look up in panic to make sure that all my limbs were there, and even then something was wrong.
“Why are you laughing?” I croaked.
Remorro shook his head. “You are in deep shit. Momson himself is on his way now, and the Thai Army spared one of their rotary wings to get him from Bangkok to Nu Poe. You know how rare it is for those bastards to let anyone use one of their precious rotary wings?”
“Why?”
“Why what?” he asked.
“Why is Momson coming?” Speaking was difficult. My throat felt dry despite a saline drip that fed water into my arm, and it was as if someone had taken sandpaper to my vocal chords.
“Because you killed her,” said Orcola. “I guess you weren’t supposed to wipe Margaret, although why that’s the case is a freakin’ mystery to us. We think you deserve a medal. Maybe now the Thai Army can get these girls under control. We’ve even been recalled and leave with the rotary wing.”
The comment made me angry, which was shocking; Orcola’s view made sense. With the Thai Army and Gra Jaai at odds—at the worst possible time, during a war—it must have been impossible for anything to get done, and now there was a path forward, another chance at reconciliation. Then I realized it wasn’t that part that had annoyed me; it was that Orcola approved of Margaret’s death.
“You don’t know shit,” I said.
“I’ll tell you what I know. Five Laotian and Cambodian Army groups are on their way now, and already their advance forces are crammed into every empty space we could find. Naval advisers from Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines too. The worm has turned, and the craziest of the Gra Jaai are talking about being able to hold back the Chinese, maybe even invade Burma to just wipe the whole fucking country clean. India is screaming mad at Chinese border incursions and is ready to go nuclear.”
The sound of a deeper pounding now came from the side, not overhead. It shook my bed as though someone on the other side of the rock walls had turned a subwoofer all the way up and pointed it at my head.
“What are you talking about? What’s that pounding?”
Remorro offered me a cigarette and I took it, waiting for him to light it as he spoke. “Turns out that months ago the Thai King authorized Gra Jaai diplomatic missions to every country in southeast Asia. Everyone knows that when Thailand falls, Laos is next and then Vietnam, after which Beijing has the whole South China Sea. So nobody wants China to win here. Several countries sent troops, and if you thought the Thai Army was pissed at the girls before you left… For a day or so we thought the generals would try for a coup. The Army was kept totally out of the loop until the last minute and doesn’t want any of these guys here; it’s an Asian thing; the Thais hate the Laotians and Cambodians, the Cambodians hate the Laotians and Thais, and the only thing they all have in common is that everyone hates the goddamn Chinese.”
“And,” Orcola added, “that deeper sound is from plasma artillery. Gra Jaai. They’ve been building the stuff for years, in secret, and had hidden artillery positions all along the line but didn’t use it until now. Gotta hand it to them.”
I sucked on the cigarette until it w
as a nub, then spat it out to ask for another. Remorro lit it. The water dripped on my face now, warm and nauseating, but it soon cooled to make me feel better as though it was washing away the clay and blood, scrubbing the last remnants of jungle from my pores. While we sat there nobody spoke. I didn’t want them to. Now that I’d gotten used to Nu Poe and spent time in its jungle, the pair of men looked like misfits, skinny cutouts from a Special Forces recruiting ad whom the girls would never let into their inner sanctum and who therefore would never amount to anything useful. To anyone. Their opinions were equivalent to those of talking heads on the news holos, always offering advice and analysis, none of which was worth a damn.
They stood when Lucy entered, and Remorro and Orcola said their good-byes, leaving me with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter; I was glad to see them go.
Lucy stood next to me and grinned. “You honored her.”
I shook my head. “I killed her.”
“Do you think she wasn’t ready, that she hadn’t prayed for your arrival?” Lucy pulled a chair closer and sat, staring past me and at the wall. “She saw your arrival over a year ago and had everything planned for it—plasma artillery, asking our neighbors for help against the Chinese if they came, everything.”
“I know where you’re headed, Lucy. You want to know if I’ll take the job as head crazy of crazies, and to tell you the truth, part of me wants to, but I don’t know.”
“Why?” she asked. “What is so difficult about making the decision?” When I didn’t answer, Lucy nodded. “Well, in the meantime I need you to do us a favor.” I noticed then that she had a bag, out of which she pulled a light orange jacket, dark green dress pants and shirt, and a pair of boots. “Pretend you’re our leader.”
Chimera (The Subterrene War) Page 30