In the Valley

by Jason Lambright

  A couple more steps and he was walking past a Juneau Army ground-car with an incongruous antilander cannon. That meant that Paul had reached the outer perimeter. Strangely enough, his balls did not pull up into his belly from the tension. He knew that he was headed into unsuited combat, but he felt good. His body would hold on throughout the movement. He was trained, experienced, and had all the right toys.

  The branches of dinosaur trees arched overhead, making a curious mottled light as he walked. Paul heard some clanking of equipment to his front and cursing in a low voice. No one wanted to give away the column, so violations of noise discipline were dealt with summarily and harshly.

  Paul saw Bashir in front of him, clearly. Bashir moved as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And as usual, he carried no weapons openly. Bashir left the big guns for his soldiers—if he needed to mete out death, he would do it at close range with his Deutsch surplus P-39.

  Paul had seen Bashir in action a couple of days ago. A wounded dissident had reached for a weapon as they were entering a house, and Bashir had smoothly dispatched him with the pistol that had been tucked under his shirt. He shot the man before anyone else even had a chance to react.

  Bashir was a pro, and his men were killers. Paul felt a gathering power in the darkness as they marched toward Pashto Khel. As he turned north with Second Company toward the river, Paul was ready for whatever came next.

  After completing advanced infantry training, it was traditional for soldiers to get a few weeks of block leave before shipping off-world. So Paul went home with a halo certificate that authorized him thirty days of freedom before his life-changing trip to the stars.

  Freedom: Paul couldn’t think of a better word for the marvelous feeling he felt as he flew from the shuttle terminal in Oklahoma City, bound for Pittsburgh. In the Oklahoma City terminal he didn’t feel his liberation so much because there were coffles of force recruits doing the perp walk down to Fort Sill, with cadre guidance to keep them from going astray. Paul felt the recruits’ pain, having been in their position only twenty weeks earlier.

  In fact, he wished he could shrink into the floor to stay away from the hard-faced sergeants he saw in the terminal there. However, the cadre from Sill paid him no attention in his dress browns. He was clearly on leave, headed somewhere. The training cadre had bigger fish to fry than one lone trooper in his browns. Besides, Paul looked squared away in his dress uniform. There was nothing out of regulations about him. From the stiff high collar of his blouse, adorned with the crossed-rifles pin, to the permapolish dark brown of his low-quarters (his dress shoes), his look was squared away.

  He was no longer a recruit in the training and doctrine command. He had orders on his halo that said so, visible to all with mil-grade government access. His orders stated that on 28MAR15 (March 28, 2315) he was to board transportation from his HOR (home of record, a ubiquitous military acronym) to Force Installation Gutierrez, in Cuba. From Cuba, he would loft upward with an unknown number of fellow soldiers and navy types via hypersonic shuttle to the FSS Merton R. Johnson, the outbound freighter to the Hyades cluster, 153 light-years away.

  Apparently the world he was going to was Ottawa 6, and it orbited a star called Tauri-something. He really didn’t know much about the place, and frankly, he didn’t care. All his eyes had seen upon first receiving his orders were the words “153 light-years distant.” The words seemed to slam a door shut in his head. Paul had signed a contract with the forces; this was the result.

  A staggering distance: 153 light-years. Secretly, while at Sill, he had hoped he would go to some training billet in Brazilia or something. That would be far enough away to satisfy his wanderlust, close enough that his whole life near a distant star called Sol wouldn’t be hard to find in the night sky of some distant world.

  Well, that wish just hadn’t worked out. As his father was fond of saying, “Wish in one hand, and shit in the other: see which one fills up first.” In Paul’s mind, the shit hand had been filled, and the wish hand was woefully empty. He would be going to work in some way faraway place with algal mats for bedfellows and some freaky yellow sky or something. Oh yeah, and chances were some dissident asshole would be trying to blow him up.

  His orders, as many times as he had looked at him, had given no hint. They simply said:

  SM (service member) to report on 28MAR15 for transportation to near space at Force Installation Gutierrez, Cuba. SM will be shipped outbound on the FSS Merton R. Johnson. Journey will take approx. 270 +/–30 days Earth relative.

  SM will serve in the Hyades AO for three (3) years. First world of service is Pan-American Federation World Ottawa 6.

  SM will be met at Hope shuttle port by unit representatives upon landfall.

  SM is assigned as Grenadier, Det 2, H Co. 2/18 IN (Armored).

  After that was a bunch of gobbledygook about pay and allowances and how he was authorized thirty-five kilos of gear and ten kilos of “personal effects,” excluding “unauthorized items”—followed by a long list of such items.

  One item had caught his eye: “Artificial Intelligence Sexual Services Device, Humanoid Shape.” Really? They had thought of that too? Paul thought for a second. With some of the guys he had known so far, he could see it. So someone had surely tried it. Paul would have died of embarrassment to be caught with something like that, let alone using one.

  Besides, now that he was wearing a regulations-compliant civilian halo (must be black or brown plastic in appearance, with no ornamentation) and not that piece-of-shit recruit one, he had access to all his good stuff again, including his recordings of Rhoda. Life was good.

  He had pinged his father from Oklahoma City, letting him know that he was coming in. His father answered right back, saying that he’d meet him outside of security in Pittsburgh. His family had rented a ground-car to pick him up.

  Paul cruised out of the gangway leading from the shuttle in Pittsburgh. The weather outside was sunny but cold, at minus two degrees Celsius.

  He had just spent his flight making out with the woman in the seat next to him. He made his distance from her now, though, because apparently her boyfriend was waiting on her. It was an odd situation but, he thought, a very nice way to start his leave.

  His randiness and ready-to-party mood was quenched a bit, however, by the thought of the orders lurking on his halo. What was he going to tell his parents? Paul remembered how upset Father had been years ago when he got that message from Uncle Jack.

  Well, he rationalized, it was not like he had to make a career of the forces. After all, one of the big selling points the recruiter had given him (he finally had spoken with him) was that every separating force member would be guaranteed a berth back to Earth on the next available transport. Of course, they only had one shot at that offer.

  Paul didn’t quite get the ramifications of that offer at the time. He was young, and life was offering him a bountiful bouquet of delicious foods and new friends. Also, every young woman seemed to him at that time to be a garden of fresh delights, and he was a bunny. Paul was a typical young man, straight out of over half of a year’s worth of the military straitjacket.

  He knew his father was waiting on him, but he had to walk over to the chain bar in the terminal and order his first ever legal beer. Much to the disgruntlement of the trainees, they had been authorized no beer during their two brief passes into Lawton. The recruit halo had kept them honest. Boy—was Paul ever glad to turn in that treacherous device when he out-processed at Fort Sill!

  Usually, alcohol was not sold to persons under the age of twenty-five, but Paul was on active duty and in uniform, so he was entitled. He had to do this. He walked up to the counter. An older man was busy polishing glasses. Paul was sure he was doing that just to look busy; there had to be a sanitizer under the counter. The fellow looked up. He had a prizefighter’s broken nose. That was pretty unusual: most people would have gone to the autodoc to have the defect fixed.

  “What’ll ya have, trooper?” It was exactl
y the time-honored question Paul had been expecting.

  “I think I’ll have a Yuengling,” Paul squeaked. How typical, at such a moment of triumph, that his voice would break. The bartender pretended not to notice and poured him one. He made a thick head on the top and handed it over.

  Paul reached out and took it like it was the nectar of the gods. He took a long pull and sighed with delight. The yeasty deliciousness was so thick he swore he could taste the brew with his nose alone. This day was getting better and better.

  The bartender eyed Paul up knowingly. “What outfit are you with?” he asked.

  Feeling heady and magnanimous with the brew, Paul shot back with what was on his orders: “H Co, 2/18 Infantry, Armored,” he said. He figured he’d impress the keep with that one. Everyone knew about the armored infantry—they were on all the cool videos.

  But the bartender surprised him instead. “Bayonet soldiers, huh? I worked with them some years ago.” He had an odd look in his eyes. Paul noticed that he shook himself a little and found a spot on the spotless bar that he really needed to wipe.

  Bayonet soldiers? Huh? How come this civvy apparently knew more about his unit than he did? Oh yeah, duh, he must be a veteran, Paul thought. There weren’t many of them, but they were around. Maybe he could pump him for some info.

  He took another gulp of his beer and started off. “Well, sir, I’m going off-world next month, and that’s my new unit. Could you tell me something about them? No one at Sill seemed to know anything about my new outfit.” No surprise, that—with units spread over three hundred light-years in all directions.

  The keep stopped what he was doing, gave a little smile, and drawled, “You’ll be sorrrry!”

  Paul didn’t know how to react to that. So he swallowed his beer down fast, scuttled away, and went to meet his father on the other side of security.

  Riding in the armored ground-car to the village of Buree, Pathan Province, Paul was sorry he had ever accepted the assignment as an advisor to the Juneau 3 Army. He was in the company of his new advisees, led by a certain madman named Bashir. Paul had been on-planet for about a month.

  So far, this whole business was looking fatally dangerous. Paul had come to the realization that, unlike a line unit, he couldn’t trust the guys he was operating with: Second Company, Third Battalion, 215th Juneau Army Infantry Brigade.

  About one Earth-constant year ago, he had linked up with the soldiers who would become Forces Military Assistance Team 1.69. The team would be known as an FMAT, in the acronym-crazed parlance of the force. The team had been brought together by Force HQ on Canton 2. The soldiers selected for the team came from wildly differing units and backgrounds. When the force’s manning cloud had crunched the backgrounds of a bunch of soldiers for a team, they had spat out the names of twelve guys.

  Just guys? Where were the ladies?

  It turned out that for a mission to Juneau 3 the requirement was for an all-male team. The reason for that was that the dissident movement on Juneau was strongest in an area that was ethnically Pashtun. The Pashtun, like on Old Earth, had a problem with female leadership, so FMAT 1.69 had to be comprised of males only.

  Yay, thought Paul at the time, a stag party. Having only males did tend to simplify administration, though. And after learning something about his teammates, Paul and the colonel were gratified that this was an all-male show.

  Enter the colonel, the team’s leader. He had been whiling away his time to retirement at Force Staff HQ in Montevideo, on Old Earth. The force’s vice commander noticed that the colonel was manning a desk and thought him ill suited for such a job. So the vice commander asked the colonel to head back into space to lead an FMAT against the dissidents on a world 208 light-years from Earth. The colonel, being the warrior and quiet professional that he was, said not just yes, but hell yes.

  Eleven months’ transit time later, with a quick stop to see the lay of the land in Juneau, the colonel showed up on Canton 2, the next system over. He awaited the arrival of his potential teammates with some trepidation, as the forces had seemingly just pulled names out of a hat. The first to arrive from elsewhere was a Lieutenant Paul Thompson.

  Lieutenant Thompson was fresh from a low-intensity combat assignment as a rifle platoon leader on Roodeschool 5. The veteran soldier had come up from the ranks, having graduated OCS, so he was a (much) older LT than most units had.

  Paul was in his late thirties, with salt-and-pepper hair and dark brown eyes. He had a naturally ruddy complexion thanks to his partially Hispanic and native North American background. He stood one meter seventy-three and weighed about ninety-five kilograms. Like most line soldiers, he had a somewhat stocky build and a runner’s physique.

  The colonel thought he might be a good fit but wasn’t entirely convinced at first. After all, the colonel had spent his entire career in Special Forces, and he had some prejudices against the line.

  The colonel immediately put Paul to work with administrative issues. The force had created the mission but didn’t bother with small potatoes, such as ammunition allotments, a training schedule, and so forth. The force had however set up a halo-extension combat-advisor course for the twelve-man team to take on Canton 2 when everyone showed up. The colonel had his doubts about extension learning, so he planned to go off the reservation and form his team as he saw fit, once it was assembled.

  The next soldier to show up was Mighty Mike. Mike had come from Forces Rangers—First Battalion, specifically. (Rangers call them “Batts.”) He had definite ideas about how teams like this were supposed to be run; and he and the colonel got together and formed a plan. Mike was the team sergeant—the NCO ramrod that made the colonel’s vision and mission statement a reality.

  Mike was good shit, Paul reflected, even though, having been an NCO himself, he and Mike came into conflict from time to time, especially thanks to the colonel’s philosophy that the team sergeant would occasionally have operational control over ranking officers (like a certain Paul Thompson). Still, it was the colonel’s show, so Paul went along with the call. He became even more willing after Ranger Mike demonstrated his tactical and technical excellence at key points during their train up on Canton 2.

  Team 1.69 may have been the colonel’s baby, but it had a lot of Mighty Mike’s grubby fingerprints on the overall concept. Mighty Mike had an easy smile, ten layers of bullshit, and a devious streak a mile wide. He was of stocky build with sandy-brown hair and peculiar hazel cat eyes that would focus on his intended victim with laser intensity.

  For Paul, a line soldier from the beginning, working with a Special Forces (SF) guru and an experienced Ranger was an eye-opener and a challenge. Those guys were pros, and Paul set his sights from the beginning on measuring up to them. After all, Team 1.69 was just another unit, and he had been in lots of units.

  Paul just hadn’t been in a unit that set the bar as high as this one. Paul would later thank his lucky stars that the team had such strong leadership. If the colonel and Mike set the bar high, it was because the mission, as Paul was to find out, demanded a high level of proficiency.

  The force had to help the Pan-American Federation and the Euro bloc govern dozens of worlds across nearly three hundred light-years of space. Usually, diplomacy and local police forces were enough to stabilize the hodgepodge of competing interests and ethnicities. Sometimes the local forces were overwhelmed by conflicts that arose on the worlds, and they needed help, especially when dissident factions began to accumulate significant power bases. This is where the force came in.

  Not every world had a large force garrison, nor could every world have one. The larger units of the navy and force infantry tended to be on worlds bordering Pan-Asian systems of influence, just in case things went in the pot. Technically, the Pan-Asians and Pan-Americans were at peace with one another and had been for a long time. But being technically at peace did not mean one side or the other did not provide some covert support to the other side’s dissidents.

  Worlds that were lightly g
arrisoned but had strong regional dissident movements tended to have Special Forces personnel who would train local police and military units in counterinsurgency. But there were only so many SF units around to shoulder the load, and nearly every world had some kind of dissident presence: hence units like Paul’s, where regular line troopers would be brought in to conduct the “FID” mission (foreign internal defense).

  Force doctrine taught that such ad-hoc units, given a halo-extension combat-advisor course, would be adequate for low-intensity, counterinsurgency warfare. Of course, Force HQ also tended to help the process along by salting combat-advisor teams with Special Forces and Ranger personnel when HQ perceived that the threat level might escalate.

  This practice explained the manning of Team 1.69, Force Military Advisor Team to the Juneau Army. There were twelve guys to one battalion of indigenous soldiers. Generally spoken, a line battalion of planetary forces consisted of between five and eight hundred soldiers. The battalion the team would be advising had about six hundred men on the rolls at any given time.

  After Paul, the colonel and Mighty Mike had hit the ground; the other guys slated for the team showed up on transports in the following month as onesies and twosies. Force HQ had briefed the colonel that FMAT 1.69 would be advising a Juneau Army infantry battalion with three line companies, so the colonel broke his team into four cells. One cell would be administrative and command.

  The colonel was the obvious choice to lead the command cell. He reserved the right to attach himself to the other cells at any time if it looked like there was going to be a cool mission. When the colonel said “cool mission,” he really meant stuff blowing up and general ensuing mayhem. The colonel had an odd sense of humor—and a bulletproof sense of duty.

  The colonel was of average height, average looks, and average build. His swarthy looks and black hair blended in with the background easily, and he was definitely not the muscle-bound, ‘roid-raging Special Forces character of military fiction. The colonel was 100 percent mission focused. People who crossed him lost every time.