Afterwards, we talked Grand Strategy, shifting troops all over the continent, free of all political constraints and certain we would never hash it the way the Pentagon had. Doubt flowers from seeds that spend decades germinating; confidence is a weed that springs up overnight. And so youth gains in certitude what it lacks in prudence. It was no different back then; only, the stakes were higher.
Eventually, we spoke of our own personal plans. Lyle went how he was angling for an assignment down in the Frontera—“because that’s where the next big yee-haw’s going to be”—and Angel wanted nothing more than to hunt Joeys up in the Nations. White teeth split his broad, dark face. The rest of us counted the Nations a nest of traitors and secessionists; but with Angel it was personal. Then Jimmy said, in that quiet voice of his, that he’d put in for a hoofer. We grinned and waited for the punch line and when it didn’t come our smiles slowly faded. “I’m serious,” he said. “I won’t go Inside again.”
Angel looked shocked and Lyle’s face stiffened in disapproval; but I was the one who spoke up. “How can you say that, Jimmy? After what we went through together in camp? You’re a suit lieutenant, God damn it!” Dismay pried me from the chair behind my cluttered workstation; or rather, it tried to. My legs betrayed me and I nearly cracked my head on the edge of the desk as I toppled.
The others were all around me. I swatted Jimmy’s hand away and let the Angel bear me up and set me back in my accustomed place. “Why’d you do that, man?” Lyle asked as he fussed the blanket around my waist. “You shouldn’t oughta do that.” Jimmy wouldn’t meet my eyes. We’d just gotten our bars, we were celebrating, and that hog of Jimmy’s looked phatter and stoopider the more I drank. Jimmy always blamed himself, but it was my idea; so what the hell. That was then.
“I get around all right,” I said to excuse myself. I could function. Most days, I could even walk. “Sometimes, the spasms—You know.”
They all said they knew; but how could they? You dream and you train for months and months and then in one drunken moment you throw it all away for a God-damned motorcycle ride. Power suits amplify the suit louie’s every move. A man can’t wear it if he suffers unpredictable seizures. As if to underscore my thoughts, my left leg began to twitch. If I’d been suited up, my walker would have toppled. Stress, the doctors all said. It was stress that brought it on; but what did they know?
I was barred by circumstance; but Jimmy planned to walk away. That made no sense. Who would give up a power suit if he didn’t have to? Angel was puzzled, too; and Lyle said, “Sometimes a guy gets syndrome and he just can’t take being Inside no more.” He was so damned understanding that Jimmy flushed and said how it wasn’t that at all; or at least, not exactly.
“You know how things stand up in the mountains,” Jimmy said. “I don’t suppose it’s much different with the Yoopers or the others, except maybe the terrain’s rougher. Straight up or down as often as not, and canyons pinched as tight as a preacher’s wife on Sunday. Officially, the whole area’s pacified; only someone forgot to tell the militias.”
“They are not ‘militias,’ suit lieutenant,” said Angel in a mock-official voice. “They are ‘bandits’.”
“I know that,” Jimmy told him. “We only call ’em ‘militias.’ Like you say ‘gangs’ when you pull urban duty.” He swigged his Skull and sat with the bottle dangling by its neck between his knees while he scowled at nothing. “The war’s platoon-size up there,” he said at last. “The regiment’s scattered in firebases all across God’s Country—only God ain’t home. The only time I ever saw my colonel was over the Lynx. We got our orders—when we got any orders at all—from the twenty-four. Otherwise, we were on our own.” He shook his head. “Pacified…”
“Who was your colonel,” Lyle asked.
“Mandlebrot. He was a sumbitch. Worried more about the cost of patrolling than whether Joey walked the line. When I took the platoon out, I used to sling the word off the twenty-four, then put my dish tech on arrest so I could say I never got the bounceback telling me to stay put.”
Angel laughed. “That’s good. That’s bean. Wish I’d thought of that.”
That was the sort of hack Jimmy used to pull. Always by the book, but sometimes he wrote notes in the margins. “How long did you fool him?” I asked.
“Oh, not long,” Jimmy admitted. “I said he was a sumbitch. Never said he was stupid. So sometimes I would go out unofficial-like with the reg’lar militia—the sheriff’s posse. They had their own ATVs. Horses, too. Some places hooves’ll take you where tires won’t go. They were locals, and knew the country just as well as the bandits. I mean they knew it close up, like you know your girl-friend, not just from the up-and-down.”
“You were too far north for the twenty-fours?” asked Angel.
Jimmy shrugged. “Nah, but the twenty-fours can’t give you terrain detail the way an up-and-down in LEO can. Sometimes a little sliver between canyon walls was all the sky we could dish. There’s always something up there but you have to code dance, depending on what sat’ your dish can catch. Well, that sheriff was a clever pud. Didn’t need an eye in the sky, because he had eyes and ears all over ground level—and kept his county in pretty good law ’n’ order, considering. But he knew when he needed extra weenie, so he was happy enough when I tagged along. Not happy, you understand; but happy enough. The irregulars don’t much like us; but they hate the bandits worse—’cause it’s their brothers and cousins and all getting kneecapped and necklaced.”
“An’ half the time,” said Angel, “it’s their brothers and cousins and all that’re doing the kneecaps and necklaces.”
“Word up,” said Lyle. “Neighbors huntin’ neighbors. No wonder they ain’t happy campers.”
“Folks back here don’t always draw a line between bandits and friendlies,” I said, thinking about my ©-Net story, “The Loyalist.” “So your possemen feel they have to prove their loyalty.”
“Righteous beans,” said Angel. “Hey. You hear what happened to the 7th down in the live oak country? ‘Rooster’ McGregor—you ever meet ’im? Skinny guy with teeth out to here?—he was doing just what you were, Jimmy. Riding with the posse when he couldn’t take his platoon out. Only it turns out the possemen were the bandits. Deputy Dawgs by day; camos and piano wire by night. Rooster, he got his ticket stripped over it, but he accidentally hung the sheriff before the court martial took his bars.”
Jimmy hadn’t been listening. “They don’t respect us,” he said. “Never understood that ’til the last time I was Inside. Now…” He voice trailed off and his eyes took on a distant look. I traded glances with Lyle and Angel, and waited.
“We called him ‘Wild Bob’,” Jimmy said finally. “I suppose he had his own name for himself and some mumbo-jumbo, self-important rank. Generalissimo. Grand Kleagle. Lord High Naff-naff. Maybe he called himself The Bald Eagle, cause he sure as shit had no hair; but he could’ve called himself Winnie the Pooh, for all I cared. ’Cause what he was was a murderer and a rapist and an armed robber, and he probably picked his nose in public. What he’d do every now and then—just to let us know he was still around—he’d send a body floating down the river from the high country. One of our agents or a friendly or maybe just someone looked at him cross-eyed. Or he’d throw a roadblock up and collect ‘tolls’ from everybody passing through. Or he’d yee-haw a firebase and pick off a freshie or two.
“Yeah, he was a piece of work, all right,” Jimmy said. “And he knew to the corpse just how far he could push it before the higher-ups would scratch their balls and wonder how ‘pacified’ the area really was. So Badger Stoltz—that was the sheriff—he developed a keen interest in learning Wild Bob’s whereabouts.
“One day, word came in that Bob was holed up in an old mining town, name of Spruce Creek. The silver gave out way back when, but no one had the heart to close it up. I seen the place, and I can’t say I blame ’em. It’s a spot worth stayin’ in, just to open your eyes to it in the morning. It sets in a high, isolated me
adow, with peaks on every side and four passes leading out. A spruce forest surrounds it and climbs halfway up the mountain flanks before giving way to krummholz and bare, gray rocks. The state road follows the creek through the center of town; but the Joeys have watchtowers on both east and west passes and it wouldn’t take ‘em more’n ten minutes to turn either one into a deathtrap if anybody tried to come in that way. The townies either support Wild Bob or they’re too scared not to. Or both. Hell, like I said, even the friendlies don’t much like us. And I can’t say they weren’t given cause in the old days.”
“Don’t mean nothin’,” Angel said. “Don’t excuse what they done. Don’t excuse collaborating, neither.”
Jimmy just shook his head. “It’s a damn shame what things have come to. Gimme another Skull, would you.”
Lyle handed him the bottle. “So what about this Wild Bob?”
“I’m comin’ to it.” He popped the cap and tipped the neck toward us in salute. “In and Out,” he said.
“Yeah.” That was Lyle. “Except you want Out.”
Jimmy darkened. “I said I was comin’ to that. I just gotta give you the topo. There’s another road. A county road. Packed dirt and gravel, mostly. Comes in from the south, gives the townies something they can call an intersection, and meanders out over the north pass. At that point whoever put the road in, must’ve figgered out there wasn’t any place to go over on the other side; so it just fizzles out in the rocks and tundra. The Joeys keep an eye on the south pass, but don’t pay much mind to the north.”
Angel spoke. “I sense a plan,” he said clapping his hands together. “A strategy!”
“Four suit louies,” I said. “Two to keep ’em interested in the state road; one to block their retreat over the south pass; and one to sneak in through the bathroom window.”
“Sure,” said Jimmy, “except I didn’t have no four suit louies at the firebase. Just me and Maria Serena—and one of us had to stay Out if the other went In, in case Joey yee-hawed the firebase. Wild Bob had maybe twenty, twenty-five bandits with him—he ran the town like a damn safe house, and every terrorist in three states could put up there for a week or two. I had the sheriff’s posse—Badger Stoltz and ten whipcord guys who took their tin stars serious—and I had my power suit. So I figured the odds at better’n even. Plan was, the sheriff would waltz with our boy on the county road, draw ’em south a ways, while I took the walker in from the north.”
“Couldn’t use a floater, then?” Angel asked.
Jimmy shook his head. “Too steep. Ground effect don’t work too good when the ground is vertical. I’d have to do finger-and-toe climbing the last stretch. There’s a reason that road don’t go nowhere. Sheriff sent one of his guys with me—a cute little bit named Natalie who just happened to be his daughter—to show me the way. I had the photos from the up-and-down, but like I said, things can look real different on the ground. Me and Stoltz worked it out and didn’t say beans to nobody until the day I went In—’cause, you know, someone might have a cousin or talk in his sleep or something. So the day comes and Stoltz rides his ten guys south—they got the most ground to cover before they get in position—and Natalie waits while I go into the teep room and wriggle into my power suit–”
“Duck into a phone booth!” said Lyle. “Put on your cape and Spandex!”
“Superman!” said Angel. “Ta da-daah!”
“–fiber ops and hydros hooked up–”
“–leap tall buildings–”
“–set my virtch hat–”
“–faster than a speeding bullet–”
“–power up the suit and–”
“Oh, man, I know that feeling–”
“– ain’t nothing like it–”
They bubbled, their words tumbling one atop the other, a glow spreading across their faces. I remained quiet and stared into my beer. I could remember what it felt like. Infinite power. You could dribble the world and shoot hoops. My fingers cramped into a sudden ball and I hid the rebellious limb under the desk.
“I took the walker out to the firebase perimeter and leaped over the wall right beside Natalie.”
“Yee-haw!” said Lyle.
“It scared her. She hadn’t been expecting it, and her horse reared up and near threw her. I told her I was ready-Freddy; and she just looks in my optics and says, let’s not waste any more time, and she yanks on her bridle and heads off toward Spruce Creek.” Jimmy drained his bottle and tossed it to Angel, who placed it carefully in the growing architectural wonder our empties were creating.
“The town wasn’t too far, as the bullet flies; but you couldn’t rightly get there going straight. Still, her dad and the others needed time to get in position, so Natalie set off at an easy canter with me loping along beside her. You know what it’s like in those walkers. You want to leap and soar. And of course it’s scaled about twice the human body, so you have to get used to the difference in stride and reach and squeeze. So I’d stretch my arms and the walker’s manipulators would reach out and tear a limb off a cottonwood. Or I’d take a couple giant steps, just for the hell of it; then wait for Natalie to catch up. Third or fourth time I did that, she told me I was scaring her horse and please stop; so I had to plod the rest of the way. It was like being hamstrung.”
“Hang a handicap sign on your back,” Lyle agreed. “Get prime parking.”
“Tell it, Brother Lyle!” said Angel. They tossed the thoughtless jape from one to the other.
“Satellite recon is a wonderful thing; but even the up-and-down can’t see through trees or overhangs or pick fine details from a shadow-black canyon. Natalie led me the last part of the way. Took me down game paths, along a creek bed, through stands of Douglas fir that looked like they’d been there since God spread his tarp. She knew her horses, that Natalie. Couldn’t have been more’n nineteen, twenty; but she sat in the saddle like she’d been born there. Well, in that country, maybe she had. She never said more’n two dozen words to me the whole trip; and those were mostly ‘this way’ or ‘over there.’
“Finally, we come to the base of a sheer cliff. There was three canyons cut into it. No, not even canyons. More like cracks. Recon barely showed ’em, but Badger Stoltz and his daughter swore there was one of ’em led to the top. Natalie rode along the base of the mountain and ducked a little ways into each. Then she come out and said, ‘The right one. It slopes up real sharp, then goes vertical into a chimney that opens out on the high tundra. From there, your GPS should show you the way.’”
“Wasn’t she going with you?” asked Angel.
I snorted. “Weren’t you listening? Take a horse up a fissure like that?”
Jimmy rubbed his palms together. “I said, ‘Wish me luck?’ and she just yanked on her horse’s reins. ‘You don’t need luck when you’ve got that,’ she said. I knew she meant the walker, so I come back and said, ‘I ain’t no Imperial Storm Trooper and Wild Bob ain’t the Rebel Alliance. I’m on your side. We’re the good guys.’
“‘The good guys,’ she said. And, oh, she was pissed. Angry and afraid all at once. ‘Was your government ragged on folks until bandits like your Wild Bob could play the hero. And now my daddy has to ride out and maybe take a splash of fléchettes in his belly, ’steada ticketing speeders along the state road.’
“‘He ain’t my Wild Bob,’ I said. ‘I come to take him down.’
“Her lips curled. Full, soft lips. Oh, they were lips for kissing. And here I was a young suit louie going off to do battle. I deserved a kiss. But I was suited up, teeping a walker, and there was more than telemetry and digital screens between us. Instead of a kiss, I got a kiss off. ‘You come to take him down?’ she said, and she leaned forward over her horse’s head and pointed a finger into my optics. ‘You listen to me, mister “suit louie.” If my daddy even gets wounded bad, you’ll have one more militia in the high country to worry about, and that’ll be me!’
“Hoo!” said Angel. “And she’d be a bad ’un, too.”
“She w
as just worried about her Pa,” I suggested. Jimmy looked at me, then shrugged.
“Maybe. I couldn’t let it bother me, though. I had a job to do; and if I didn’t get up that cut, her daddy probably would take a slug. Without me, the possemen were outnumbered and outgunned.”
“So how’d you do it?” Lyle asked. “Sounds like you’d be out of line o’ sight in that fissure.”
“Oh, I had an aerostat hovering at the relay point, and Lieutenant Serena kept it on station. But you’re right. Inside that chimney, the microwave beam would be blocked. So I asked Natalie to handle the little dish. You know, stake a repeater at the entrance, then crawl after me with the parabolic until I got up to where I could bounce sky again.”
“Helluva thing to ask a girl,” said Angel.
“Did you trust her?” I asked.
“You don’t get it, Angel,” Jimmy said. “She was a posseman, not just the Badger’s daughter. She packed a nine and a railgun and there was a street sweeper in her saddle scabbard. Oh, mano a mano, any one of us could have taken her down; but we’d be walking funny for a long time after.
“Well, I took that walker into the cleft and it was like someone drew a window shade, you know what I mean? All the I/O was juiced into the walker’s receptors by that little, hand-held parabolic that Natalie Stoltz held. All she had to do was toss it aside, or even drop it accidentally, and that walker would be nothing but a pile of armor and circuitry stuck inside some rocks.
“I can’t say I didn’t think about that while I climbed that chimney; and what the colonel would say if I got stuck while I was on an unofficial outing. What I didn’t think about until later was Natalie. My walker depended on the power beam she was aiming, and the farther up the cleft I climbed, the harder it was to keep the beam targeted. She had to stand right underneath the walker and aim straight up. So if anything happened, that’d be a couple tons of composite armor and metalocene plastic come tumbling down on her head.”
There Will Be War Volume X Page 11