Glory Main

by Henry V. O'Neil

  “What is it?” He asked the question simply to make Gorman say something different.

  “Not right what he did. That other guard was asleep. He just walked out there and cut his throat. Not right.”

  With the bloody evidence of his own recent actions stretched out before them, Mortas found it difficult to sympathize with the mapmaker. He watched Cranther as if from a distance, now seeing that the dead Sim’s weapon was lying on the ground next to him. Or was that the Mauler from the guard on the bridge? The one Cranther would have killed. His groggy brain finally focused on one of the things Gorman had said.

  “Cut his throat? With what?”

  “He’s got another knife in his boot.” Trent now stood next to him, her face stamped with anger. “He waited until he was good and sure the other guard was asleep before he went out there. You were exposed over here, they could have come back at any time, but he waited until he was sure.”

  Mortas knew that the revelation should be making him angry, but he also knew why it wasn’t. The repellent memory of the killing was strong in his mind, and the only thing stronger was his recognition that the deed would have been much easier had the enemy been asleep. He was amazed by the way his mind moved off of the issue and onto the task at hand.

  “What did you do with the body?”

  “Tossed it into the drink.” Cranther turned, still in a squatting position, pushing the skullcap back a little on his head. He held out the dead guard’s combat harness and Mortas took it, noticing a similar rig on the scout’s torso. “Didn’t wanna give the Wisp here a chance to hold a ser­vice.”

  The cruel logic meshed with the new workings of his mind, and Mortas moved on. “Did those things get him?”

  “Yeah, but not as fast as you might think.” Cranther glanced down at the corpse. “They’re probably still nearby, though. Made a lot of noise when they found the first one.”

  He scooped up the Sim’s weapon and handed it to Mortas, prompting his next question. “Where’s the other one of these?”

  “I left it on the bridge with his helmet. When the others come back, it’ll convince ‘em it was an accident. One guard takes a break, takes off his helmet, puts down his weapon, leans back too far on the rail, starts going over, and the other one reaches for him.” He motioned toward the dead guard. “I’ll take him out there unless you want to.”

  “Go ahead.”

  With surprising ease, the short man pulled the body up onto his shoulders and then stood up. He was gone in a moment.

  “Not right, the things we’ve done here.”

  “Gorman, that’s the last time I’m willing to hear that.” Anger welled up in him at the thought of what he’d been through, and that one of the ­people he’d done it for found it unacceptable. “We had to cross the bridge, and they were in the way.”

  “Are you planning to kill everybody who gets in your way, Lieutenant?”

  Out in the darkness there was a loud splash, followed by a sickening thrashing in the water under the bridge. For an instant Mortas was back under there, swinging through the empty air, certain that he would end up in the river with the serpents. He leaned forward, making eye contact with Gorman.

  “From here on out . . . you can count on it.”

  The climb up the next hill was a tough one, but Mortas was happy to get away from the bridge. He hardly felt the exertion as they moved through the night, tripping over small stones in their haste. Even Cranther seemed eager to put distance between them and the river, recommending that they take a chance and move along the top of the ridge when they reached it. Gorman’s feet were obviously torturing him again, but he kept up without complaint. After a while Mortas decided that might actually be worse than hearing him bitch a little, as it was clear that the mapmaker was withdrawing inside himself. Trent took Gorman in hand, whispering little words of encouragement, and he decided to leave things that way for now.

  His silent position at the rear of the group gave Mortas time to think, and he found his mind focusing itself on the tactical considerations of their current predicament. It felt as if every other topic that would usually have come to mind during a march—­sex, music, jokes, bad life decisions, moments of glory, hope for the future—­had been rendered somehow irrelevant. His past was on a completely different planet and his future had shrunken to the next few hours. He now found himself completely and comfortably occupied with questions of how much distance they could cover before daylight, what help the one Mauler could be to them, and how to avoid any further involvement with the enemy until they’d found the colony. Something had changed for him back at the bridge, and he felt certain that it was not simply the dreadful act of having killed the guard. He was still revolted by the experience, and every now and then ran a hand down his shirtfront to scrape off a little more of the dried blood that clung there.

  Just before dawn they moved off of the ridge to avoid being silhouetted, and Cranther found them a safe haven in a hollow that faced the direction from which the Sim mover had come. He’d advised Mortas that it was better to see their hideaway in daylight than to simply pick one in darkness, admitting that he’d been badly surprised more than once at how exposed a hide position could be when the sun came up.

  The thick, dry grass of the lower elevation had given way yet again to thin scrub, and so they found a small depression to conceal them. Now that the enemy was definitely present they would have to hide during the day and move at night. Even that gave no guarantee of protection, as the Sims possessed infrared imagers the same as the humans. And if they got a few shuttles up in the air they’d pick off this pitiful little gang in no time.

  So where are the shuttles? Where is their air?

  Despite his empty stomach and the long night, Mortas was wide awake when they finally settled into their latest home. Cranther joined him as the sun broke over the ridges, hoping to see some indication that the enemy settlement was close.

  “It makes no sense that they haven’t got their air up. A new Sim colony usually has shuttles going out and back around the clock. Easiest way to pinpoint their location.”

  “What do you think was going on at that bridge? Only two guards, neither one knows what he’s doing, far away from any help. Why post them at all?”

  “Can’t figure it. They put them out there after dark, almost as an afterthought.” Cranther sighed, his eyes ranging over what the climbing sun was showing to be yet another barren plain. “Only connection I can make is that one ration bag. Maybe some of our ­people got landed here, like one of the special ops outfits, and they’ve been fucking with the colony.”

  “Think that’s why we haven’t seen any shuttles?”

  “Maybe. Maybe they lost a ­couple flights to ground fire and stopped sending them up, or maybe somebody got onto their field and damaged them. Truth is I have no idea.”

  The sun was up high enough to see across the open ground to the next set of hills, probably miles away. As hard as he tried, Mortas couldn’t find a single sign that anyone had ever been there before.

  It was late in the day when Trent woke him. Her guard shift had been the last one, and so Mortas had been curled up in the hole with Cranther and Gorman, like three children sharing the same small bed.

  The lack of food was making itself known in several ways. Though he’d slept for hours, his mind was still fogged when he sat up and tried to get his bearings. He’d laid his uniform top on the ground, hoping the sun would bleach out some of the bloodstain, and he touched his own shoulder as he shrugged the blouse back on. The usually meaty muscle felt odd to him, and he stopped to examine it with his hand. He caressed it for a few seconds before recognizing that it was actually smaller now, reduced by the lack of nourishment and the physical toil. For a moment it reminded him of a girl at university, his first, and he found the memory sad.

  He took a small swig from the canteen before crawling up to t
he edge of the hole where Trent was on watch. The plain below hadn’t changed, and she reported seeing and hearing nothing in the last several hours. They regarded the desolation in silence for some time.

  “Lieutenant, there’s something you really should know about Gorman.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the chartist, who was on his side with his arms hugging his chest, his knees bent, and still unconscious. “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “He wasn’t wrong to object to what happened last night.”

  “Really? Then he doesn’t understand the straits we’re in. And you don’t either.”

  “Oh, I think he understands that just fine. Maybe more than the rest of us. Don’t forget that the way he lives his life is geared toward the next life, so the concept of extinction is always on his mind.”

  “So you’re saying he doesn’t think we should fight for our lives?”

  “He probably doesn’t, but that’s not it. The Holy Whisperers serve in the Force in noncombat roles, but they don’t kid themselves about their hands being completely clean. They know they’re helping out in the commission of violence by others, and the way they square that with themselves is the total refusal to tolerate unnecessary violence.”

  “Those two guards were watching the bridge. The bridge was the only way to cross the water. What happened was necessary.”

  “Maybe. But Cranther waited until he was sure that second guard was asleep before he even moved. He made certain that he was going to be killing someone who was unconscious.”

  “You think he should have been more sporting? Woke him up, maybe?”

  “I’m afraid you’re not seeing the point here. Gorman believes we could have just walked by that Sim. Maybe we could have, maybe we couldn’t, but we didn’t even try.”

  “That is absolute nonsense. Even if that would work, what were we supposed to do with the dead Sim? Leave him there? Quietly drag him down to the water and hope one of those monsters didn’t get us as we pushed him in, just so we don’t wake up the guy on the bridge? You know, the one with the weapon?”

  “All right, maybe it was a silly idea. But Gorman believes it, and right now he’s sure that Cranther did something very wrong and that you’re on Cranther’s side.”

  “As far as what happened at the bridge? You bet I am.”

  “Well maybe you shouldn’t be. Forget the ethical questions for just a moment. Remember that I was over there too, watching everything that happened after you left. Both Gorman and I asked Cranther to get out there much sooner than he actually moved. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned for you, waiting on the other side. He knew that guard would go to sleep, and that he’d be in no danger then.” She looked down at the scout, her lip curling in contempt. “I heard him convince you to go across first, and all because that wasn’t supposed to be the hard job. Well it was the hard job, by far. You had to climb out there, risk getting spotted and killed, and then take on the guard who was actually walking his post. Cranther convinced you to do that because killing the guard on the bridge was supposed to be so dangerous.

  “Turned out it wasn’t going to be dangerous at all. And he knew that when he told you it was.”

  “See it?”

  Cranther pointed off into the gathering twilight. Mortas was trying hard to pick out the thing that had caught the scout’s eye, but it was difficult with the failing light. Or so he thought.

  “There.” Cranther put a hand on his shoulder, pointing again. For the space of a few seconds, a dull green line appeared across the plain as if hanging in the night sky. “We couldn’t see it in daylight. That’s a Sim retransmission antenna. The settlement’s on the other side of that ridge.

  “They put those antennae up when a colony’s new, before they get everything wired.” Cranther stepped away, becoming a disembodied voice. “Did you know some of our generals call the enemy the Simples? Because their tech isn’t as good as ours? Talk about simple. Sure, they’re behind us in a lot of ways, still haven’t figured out the Step, but they’ve got one very big advantage. Everything they have actually works. All the time.

  “One mission we were orbiting a Hab planet, or what was supposed to be a Hab. They’d gotten as much information from the scanners as they were ever going to get, so it was time for some scouts to hit the dirt and check it out up close. First humans ever to set foot on the place. This was before they developed the cofferdams, so they loaded the first team of Spartacans into these one-­man tubes, they’re like big darts that they used to fire straight down at a planet’s surface . . . half the time the chutes didn’t deploy.”

  He stopped for a moment, and Mortas heard him wetting his lips.

  “So the first team gets blasted down through the clouds, these giant wispy things that hid every inch of that planet, and there’s no radio check from them. Any of them. Well, Command’s got a lot of Spartacans so they loaded up the second team and shot them down there too. And the same thing happened. Nothing.

  “Somebody got smart and suggested that the darts were the problem, maybe some fatal malfunction, so they put the next team onto a shuttle and sent them flying down through the atmosphere. Hab planet’s gotta have atmosphere, ya know?

  “I was in the ready room with the next team—­you never saw such frightened faces—­and we’re listening over this speaker as they entered the clouds. And they’re reporting like mad, calling out all the readings—­there was some kind of interference with the data uplink—­and then this one guy just starts screaming out this atmospheric pressure number that is skyrocketing and then . . . nothing.”

  Mortas felt his empty stomach lurch. Grisly tales of mistakes like that one were common enough, but to hear the story from someone who’d actually been there was something different.

  “The funny thing was that, of all the data they’d collected from a distance, the pressure readings were actually right. The raw data was, at any rate. Turned out it wasn’t a Hab at all. Its atmosphere crushed all the darts, and the shuttle too. A glitch in the analysis program kept correcting the pressure readings because they were so high. The machine didn’t believe the number, so it defaulted to a livable measurement. Ho-­ly shit.

  “And the brass hats have the nerve to call the Sims simple.”

  It was dark enough to move out, but Mortas wanted to settle the issue of what had happened at the bridge. He suspected that the scout had told him his most recent war story to keep him from doing just that.

  “Corporal.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you set me up at the bridge?”

  “How do you mean?” The voice was flat and calm.

  “I mean, did you give me the hard job and keep the easy one for yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any special reason for that?”

  “Of course.” The dirt shifted under the scout’s feet, and he’d clearly turned to face him. “I been out here five years, Lieutenant, and you’ve been here less than five days. I’ve been kidnapped, tortured, abandoned, lied to, starved, written off, threatened with the death sentence, and almost sent down to a planet wearing nothing but my uniform in an atmosphere that could crush an armored suit.

  “You’re a new guy, Lieutenant. Your being an officer doesn’t change that. If we get out of this, and you do get that platoon you want so badly, it’s gonna be loaded with veterans. They’re not gonna want to take chances on your say-­so until they see that you actually know what taking a chance really means.”

  “How do you know I want that platoon? How do you know I’m not just some guy who got scooped up into this insanity just like you?”

  “It’s written all over you. I’ll bet you’ve been sucking up the lies from the Bounce all your life. The glorious cause. Humanity against the aliens. I bet you signed up just based on one of those hero profiles they’re constantly running. The returning veteran, home from the zone, covered in m
edals and saying that it’s your turn now.”

  Mortas could feel his face reddening and was thankful for the dark. The Bounce feed back home had influenced him greatly, particularly the tales of bravery and sacrifice of the heroes who had not come back. Even with his family background and the classified information it provided, he’d still bought into a lot of the propaganda. The other boys at the prep school and university, his privileged peers, had scoffed at the idea of serving and so he’d learned early on to hide his true feelings of excitement and belief.

  It’s Your Turn. He could still see the eyes of the medal-­bedecked combat vet on the Bounce, repeating the slogan of the ongoing war. It’s Your Turn. In the light of recent events, he now realized that the vet’s face had been just a bit too perfect. An actor’s face, but an actor who’d been chosen with great care. The face had been good-­looking but not handsome, mature but not hardened, and he now wondered if the man had been a veteran at all.

  “They don’t call it the Bounce for nothing.” It was the best he could manage, but he sensed Cranther was waiting for a response.

  “Yeah. That was its original name way back when, because the feed ricocheted off of satellites to reach the other planets. Marketers probably thought they’d dreamed up a really cool name for a really cool technology. But look at how ­people talk about it now. Follow the Bouncing Story. Bounce Your Brain.”

  It’s even slang at high levels now. When Father and his buddies put out their own version of a story, it’s called bounce.

  “Did you know that Spartacans are kept separate whenever we’re not on an actual mission? On the planets we’re kept in virtual prisons. In space we’re restricted to certain decks, or just plain locked up. You know why that is? Because the truth doesn’t bounce.”

  “Wait a minute. What happens when your hitch is up?”

  A short laugh. “No such thing for us. Yeah, I know you’ve seen a Spartacan hero on those profiles every now and then, but that’s a lie too. I knew a guy who knew one of those guys. He’d been snatched up like the rest of us, beat on like the rest of us, but never sent on a mission. He was connected to somebody big, and they finally found him. The Spartacans walking around out there as returned vets are almost complete phonies. And you can bet they got threatened with all sorts of trouble if they ever speak up.