They are still trying to carry the wounded one between them. She figures him for the officer.
She drops the man to his right, and then she herself drops to one knee.
They’re too far away to hear the shouting.
They’d ignore it anyway.
The uninjured man runs.
The girl and the gun track the running man.
They ignore the officer who is now sitting upright and firing wildly in their direction.
They’ll want to know why we didn’t kill the man with the tree, the girl says to the gun.
The gun fires and the running man falls face down into the snow.
No. I erased an hour and fifteen minutes from my uploadable memory and logged it as an atmospheric glitch, says the gun.
The girl moves her eye from the scope and down at the weapon in her hands. Two years together and it can still surprise her.
You understand why we walked away? she asks.
He was a low priority. Off the radar for almost a decade and presumed dead. You have operational authority on targets of opportunity, the gun replies.
The officer has stopped firing.
The girl puts her eye back to the scope and watches him bring his sidearm up to his head. She puts a round in his shoulder and moves the scope to watch the weapon fly a satisfying distance across the snow.
Nothing else? the girl asks the gun.
He wasn’t the mission, says the gun.
He wasn’t the mission and the day after tomorrow is Christmas, says the girl.
Eleven
When they get to the officer he’s still alive.
He looks up at them wearily and says something that the girl doesn’t understand.
The girl levels her weapon and shoots him in the face at point blank range.
Twelve
What did he say? she asks the gun.
They’ve been walking an hour.
He said, I killed you. Then he said it again. He thought that we were them, says the gun.
Good, says the girl.
Good.
Thirteen
The man has just set the table when the knock at the door comes.
He looks first to the child still playing with her present in front of the fire and then to his rifle leaning in the frame of the cabin.
He opens the door and looks at the girl and the gun.
We’re sorry to disturb you, but we saw the smoke. We were hoping to rest awhile. We’ll understand if you’d rather we didn’t intrude, says the girl.
The man looks at the girl. The faded uniform. He thinks she’s maybe seventeen. He’s wrong.
We? asks the man.
Merry Christmas, says the gun.
The Valkyrie
Maurice Broaddus
SECOND LIEUTENANT MACIA BRANSON LEAPT into the dark abyss and descended into a purgatory of red tracer fire. The night sky held her close as the air whipped about them, reducing her world to the deadening screech of white noise. She plummeted toward the earth, not knowing where they might land. In trees. In water. Into the midst of a Heathen patrol. All she knew for sure was that they would land somewhere in Holland. She prayed that she would be at least close to her drop zone. She was deployed in service of The Order and had a duty to perform.
The church was mother, the church was father.
A grassy knoll rushed toward her and she braced for the jolt of impact without looking down. The rush of the ground toward them, despite their training, could still send a jolt of panic through a soldier. Besides, she enjoyed holding onto the peace of the horizon for as long as possible to steady her. Her knees slightly bent, she dropped her chin to her chest and tensed her neck muscles. The earth slammed into her, her body twisting and bending in automatic reaction, giving in to the crash, a rag doll carried by the current of momentum. She slid down an embankment before coming to a halt. Slogging through three inches of pooled water, she knew what she’d find when she checked her gear. Nothing would work right. Her flight suit was only designed for controlled descents. The best tech went to the evangelical deployments. The rest of the church’s military was left with equipment full of glitches, if not flat out defective. With so many theaters of operations, the troops’ equipment had been rushed into production and not battle–tested. Like many of her fellow soldiers. Her hard landing smashed the communication relay, and her leg bundle, full of extra ammo and rations, was nowhere to be found. At least the familiar weight of her Stryker XM9 pulse rifle, though it was a generation out of date, comforted her like the embrace of an old friend.
Above her, tracer fire continued to crisscross the night sky, the light of exploding flak almost reminding her of fireworks. Almost. The proximity alert lit up on her rifle.
“Fishes,” Branson challenged.
“Loaves,” a familiar voiced responded softly from the shadows. “Your comlink down, too? Where the hell are we?”
No one was happier to see Prefect Sergeant E. Kenneth Dooley than Branson. Short, quick–thinking, and ugly as a catfight, when Dooley first joined the ranks, the older soldiers took to calling him Doo–Doo. That lasted until the first time they saw him in a firefight. He stalked a battlefield with defiant determination, daring the Heathens to hit him.
“I’d guess five to seven miles from our DZ, judging from the firing,” Branson said.
She didn’t bother to check the digital telemetry or maps in her helmet subsystem. Half the time she found the continual stream of information and dogma sermons more hindrance than help. “Which way do we head?” Dooley asked.
“Where else? Toward the firing.”
They both knew it was a bad drop. The navcom signal was down across the board, so they set about cobbling together their unit the old–fashioned way. They spread out, slow and tentative. When unfamiliar soldiers joined them and saw Branson—many replacement soldiers filled their ranks for this mission—a sense of relief lit up their faces. It was as if they sensed they were in good, experienced hands. Other officers complained that she was friendlier with the enlisted men rather than she was with them. She didn’t care. The front line was where she belonged; she even volunteered for patrols. The uniform meant something to her.
Branson watched with weary eyes as this latest batch of green recruits checked through their rucksacks and readied their weapons. She waited for them to regroup before taking final stock of what the service had her working with this time.
“When are we gonna see some action?” asked a square–jawed, broad–shouldered glamour boy with curly blonde locks. He still stank of military school.
“Who’re you?” Dooley asked with the casual contempt mixed with pity of a boxer who wholly outclassed his opponent. He had little patience with replacement soldiers.
“The name’s…”
Dooley bit into a well–chewed cigar stump and swished it about in his mouth until it found its comfortable crook. “Stow it. I don’t wanna learn your name. Learning your name is the first step to getting attached, and I sure as hell ain’t getting attached to no replacement. From here out, you’re Goldy.”
“What do they call you, ma’am?” Goldy turned to Branson.
“Second Lieutenant Branson. You want to try to call me something else?” Her stare made him turn away.
Goldy spied the ink along Dooley’s arm. “What’s the tattoo?”
Dooley pulled up his sleeve to fully reveal the image of a woman astride a white horse on his arm. Long blonde hair covered by a silver helmet, with blazing blue eyes peering from underneath it, she carried both a spear and shield. “A Valkyrie.”
“What’s a Valkyrie?” Goldy asked.
“Collectors of the favored dead. They chose the slain heroes to be taken to Valhalla. If a warrior saw one before a battle, he’d die during it. I want the Nils to always see one coming.”
“You got to be careful with all that myth talk. You don’t want to be seen as a Nil or a sympathizer.”
“A Heath. They’re Nils if they have no gods; Heath
s if they worship the wrong ones.”
“Still, choosers of the slain? Nice…” Goldy’s voice trailed off. Dooley had turned his back and stalked off to be about his business.
Branson pretended to have not noticed the interaction by studying the maps on her view screens as Goldy approached her. “How’d it go with Dooley?”
“We’re dutch,” Goldy said, without any trace of irony. “We hit it off swell.”
“Give it time. Newbies have to learn how to slip in between the seams.”
“I get it, ma’am,” Goldy said, obviously bored with the lesson.
“Pack ’em up, we’re moving out,” a new voice shouted out. First Lieutenant Gilbert Meshner. “Mush” behind his back.
Of course he’d been chosen for this mission. Branson spat.
Meshner wandered through their makeshift camp like a distracted tourist. A mop of black, greasy hair and dead grey eyes gave his face a grave severity. He was little more than a petty dictator who used vindictiveness in the guise of discipline. Rumor was that when they’d parachuted into Chiapas, Mexico, a Nil had charged Meshner. By the time the rest of the men got to him, the two had played “kata tag” and the Nil lay dead at his feet. But otherwise Mush’d long since developed a reputation for taking long walks away from the action. The men tried to joke it off as Meshner’s luck masking as skill, but no one knew what to make of him.
“We’re marching until high ground.” Meshner eyed Branson with something approaching scorn.
Not a single man stirred. They turned to Branson in a tacit double check of the orders.
“You heard the man. Let’s go, you scrotes!” Branson echoed.
§
The hills of Holland were supposed to be beautiful. The war had reduced them to greenspace ambush sites for the Nils and Heathens. The church embraced a holistic approach to fulfilling her mission: politics, technology, and the military. The Evangelical States of America already ruled their hemisphere, along with parts of Africa and Asia. The United Emirate of Islam controlled the rest of Africa along with Asia. Europe was up for grabs, a self–declared safe haven for atheists and heretics. Not that Branson cared. Nation. Religion. Tribe. Cause. There was always some supposed big idea to fight for, but in the end, all that mattered was that orders were obeyed and the mission carried out.
A dense fog crept along the field, and an eerie silence embraced them. Pulse rifle fire left a distinct odor in the air, a mix of ozone and seared flesh. The smell of death. High ground took them the rest of the night and most of the next day to find. Patrols detected Heathen troops nearby. The men marched in silence, the only sound filling the air the steady stamp of their boots slogging muddy earth. The waiting was the worst; that was what broke people. The constant state of alert, their minds imagining horrors behind every point of cover. Branson shoved that all aside.
The momentary peace gave her a chance to read up on some of her newbies. Goldy held a particular interest. His body was a stew of experimental psychotropics. For all of his country–boy persona, he had once been a serial killer with a penchant for skinning young girls before his conversion. Fortunately the church left nothing to chance when it came to one’s sanctification, even if it had to overwrite existing memories with new ones. Everyone needed redemption from something.
Praise be the blood.
“Where’s Goldy?” Branson whispered.
“Making out with the toilet.” Dooley thumbed toward some bushes. He shifted his unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth as if suddenly aggravated.
“My back teeth were floating,” Goldy muttered as he caught their eyes watching his approach.
“Tell the men to fix their katas. We attack at first light. 0530. Meshner’s orders.” Branson withdrew her edged bayonet and fixed it to the front of her pulse rifle. The high–tech stuff was good for attacking an enemy at a distance, but the final cleanup was always up close. She would always know the face of her enemy. God have mercy on her soul.
“Tell her what you told me,” Goldy said to Dooley.
“What?” Branson held her gaze on the sergeant.
“Nothing. Just campfire stories that old soldiers tell.” Dooley cut his eyes at Goldy, a silent cursing which he’d vent at some later opportunity.
“I like stories,” Branson said.
Dooley shuffled, flushed with mild embarrassment like a child caught speaking out of turn, which Branson found amusing. “You’ve already heard this one. During the American Civil War, a general kept getting these reports about how his men were afraid to be left for wounded on the battlefield. Not just afraid, but absolutely terrified, especially if they had to lay wounded at night. Try as he might, the morale of his troops kept sinking to new lows every day, but no one wanted to talk about it. The only thing any of them would say was that if you fell in combat and you wanted to survive until morning, you should hide your breath so no one knew you were still alive.
“One night, after an extended engagement with the enemy, the general walked his line. He often did this after a battle. You know, to pray for his men and clear his head. He saw some movement on the field between the two warring camps. A lone mook, he couldn’t tell if it was Yankee or Confederate, walked among the bodies. In the morning, the medics found the fallen bodies decapitated. Swore it was a woman with a sword.”
“Don’t that beat all?” Goldy asked.
Branson knew the story. She’d heard it many times before. From Meshner. “You and Lt. Meshner close?”
“Not really. He just took a shine to me is all,” Dooley said sarcastically.
“Must be your special brand of charm and wit.”
“Yeah, temper got the best of me again,” Dooley said. “Back in training camp, I threatened to kick his balls into the following week if he gave me any more bullshit jobs instead of letting me fight. There was this long pause. Thought I was done for, either booted out or thrown in the stockade. But he just got this strange grin, like a gator smiling at you. Said I was all right. I kinda took him under my wing after that. You know we have to raise these lieutenants right.”
“Speaking of our esteemed Lieutenant and long walks, where is Mush?” Goldy asked.
Branson’ eyes shriveled the grin on the replacement soldier’s face. Meshner was still their commanding officer and Branson’s job was to enforce discipline among the men. “I’ll go look for him.”
Praise be the blood.
The Blessed Sacrament. Thanks to the sacrament, a combination of human growth hormone and nanotech, she remained about the physical age of twenty–seven and in peak condition for fighting. Truth be told, the wars had begun to blur together. She hardly noticed when one ended and another began. Tour of duty after tour of duty, her body repaired and rejuvenated. “Through the blood we have life,” a familiar refrain, never truly aging, only knowing war. She tried not to think about how many test subjects that the church’s science division had gone through to perfect the gene therapy. Or worse, that they had occasionally remanded those burnouts back to the field. Like with Goldy.
“Fishes.” The challenge sounded, with a tremble of nervousness. Meshner’s pulse rifle swung toward Branson, who stood in the shadows. “Fishes.”
“Loaves,” Branson said in a low voice, calm and focused. She tried to speak with as little venom as possible, but she couldn’t always hide the distaste of addressing Meshner. “What are you doing out here, sir?”
“Just checking out the Nils’ lines.”
“I just came from there. Everything’s under control.” Branson staggered a little from exhaustion. Her ARM XS monitoring system pumped stims into her system, steadying her.
“War is a grave matter, the province of life or death.” Meshner paraphrased Sun Tzu.
Branson, not impressed by his book learning, finished the quote. “ ‘War is like unto a fire. Those who will not put aside weapons are themselves consumed by them.’”
Meshner sucked from a small silver flask. He tipped it in obligatory offer to Branson,
who waved it off. Meshner continued drinking. “Do you know what the curse of war is?”
“Sir?”
“The loss of tears. The stress. The loss of so many. The things…” Meshner’s thought trailed off. “Most men drift through life unaware of what they truly are. Only another soldier knows how hard it is to keep his sanity doing this dirty business. What did you do before all of this, Macia?”
“This is all I do, Lieutenant. I find it easier not to worry about the person I was.” She preferred war’s clean and uncomplicated emotions; giving into it, leaving behind idle dreams of family or could’ve beens. Her father was what they called an “indigenous leader,” a colony planting novice–in–training, killed in the mission field. After her parents were killed, the church took her in. The church was mother, the church was father. So joining the Service of the Order was natural. The church birthed her and war made her in its image.
“Because the person you were might not be able to live with the things that the person you’ve become had to do? Or because you don’t remember anything before the war?”
“That’s the life of a soldier, sir,” Branson said.
§
“Weapons on me. We’re moving out,” Meshner shouted. Once again, the men discreetly glanced toward Branson.
“We’re expecting some of the Nils’ best.” Branson slung her weapon to readiness, not meeting the eyes of the men, treading the minefield of leading while appearing to follow. Morale was bad enough without the men wondering who to follow when the shit hit. Technically Meshner was the ranking officer, but the First Lieutenant’s role was more administrative. A liaison ensuring that the will of the church was carried out through her military arm. First Lieutenants were usually hands off, opting to work more behind the scenes. They knew the theory of war. Branson and Dooley, they were war.
War Stories Page 11