As the company moved forward, Paul temporarily lost Z from his halo feed. Paul and Bashir were trying to hammer out a problem with Third Platoon’s progress through a cotton field on the eastern side of the village. Apparently Third Platoon’s lieutenant was telling Bashir that his men were tired; they wanted to sit down and rest and bum some tea off of the villagers.
Paul was in the midst of telling Bashir why Third Platoon’s idea was a bad concept when—pop popopop braap pop!—the fii ring started going off to Paul’s rear.
Immediately Paul crouched behind a dike, along with Bashir and some other guys. Everyone’s head was on a swivel, looking for the source of fire. Paul pulled up the halo micro feed and looked for the shooter. It was party time, again.
The halo feed identified a certain Sergeant Z as the shooter and the casualty as a dog. Paul looked up and rolled his eyes. Bashir, crouching next to him, shook his head.
What the fuck—over, Paul thought.
On cue, Z came walking toward the two men, hanging his head. Even better, the colonel and Mike’s icons came on simultaneously. Paul took the colonel’s query first and slaved it to Mike as well.
“OK, Two-Three, what’s up? Are you in contact?”
Paul shook his head. “No, Five, I thought so for a minute, but it looks like Sergeant Z, Two-Three Mike, shot a dog.”
Mike’s face appeared next to the colonel’s. He was wearing an incredulous expression. “He shot a what?”
Paul answered back, “A dog—reason unknown.”
The colonel’s face in Paul’s view screen had that expression the colonel would always get when he wanted a better explanation: eyebrows raised, chin jutted forward, eyes wide open.
“Sir, I’ll get back with you on this.”
“Check, Two-Three.” And the colonel signed off.
Mike drawled, “Yeah, roger, Two-Three. Can’t wait to hear the story. Call back when you’ve killed someone.” With a chagrined expression and a shaking head, Mike signed off.
Second Company, once the dust had cleared from the dog-killing episode, had shaken itself back out and continued toward the river. Paul and Z-man walked with them.
Paul called Z forward for an off-halo chat. “OK, Z, what the fuck was that? Why did you waste that dog?”
Z was looking jittery, his eyes, like Paul’s, were continually scanning things while they advanced with Second Company. “That fuckin’ dog attacked me. Be damned if I get chewed on by some dog. I fuckin’ hate dogs.” Z was adamant.
“OK, it attacked you, but did you have to put a magazine into it? We all thought we were in another firefight, you stupid fuck!” Paul was hot; the adrenaline from what had appeared to be another firefight was only now edging just a little downward. And after all, they were still on a sweep while conducting this little counseling session.
“I know Mike is pissed, sir, but that dog had to die.”
“Don’t do that stupid shit again, Z.” And Paul left it at that.
But Mike didn’t. Later on, Paul could have sworn Z was on halo feed with Mike because Z kept making little jumps while he walked, like he was being slapped on the head from some ghost behind him.
Halo feeds could be like that sometimes.
Finally, Second Company reached the river. For their efforts, they bagged three squirters and one dog. To add insult to injury, the village elders later demanded a payment of ten thousand credits for the mutt. After the sweep was conducted and Second Company was leaving to link up with the ground-cars, Paul and Bashir learned of the elders’ demand.
Paul and Bashir talked with them about the dog and said there was no way the Juneau government was going to pay that much for a guard dog that, by the way, had attacked a soldier.
“You should pay us for the bullets my soldier fired at your dog,” Paul said, having had enough of the elders’ garbage. “The bullets are worth at least a thousand credits.”
The elders mulled this new angle over. Finally, they came up with a solution: “Your soldier—he will work for us for five years in the fields. He looks strong; we will find him a wife.”
Paul looked over at Z, who looked like he was about to explode. Paul shot him a quelling look. He had to drag this out a little, to mess with Z for bringing up his heart rate earlier in the day.
“I will let my soldier work for you for one year. Is this good?”
“Oh hell no, sir, I’m not workin’ these goddamned fields!” Z just couldn’t control himself.
Paul laughed on the inside. Gotcha, fucker, he thought, for making my fun meter peg.
The elders said two years would be good and five hundred credits.
Paul said no deal, and Second Company left. All the soldiers were ragging poor Z-man. His new nickname was Zag-Kush, or “Dog-Killer.” Z would never live it down.
Paul would never live it down—that he had given up his chance to return to Earth for some stupid bitch that had dumped him. Each day when he went to work in the woods, trimming Purplewood trees, he would stew. He had given up everything for Darlene—everything—and she had left him to sit and spin on Ottawa 6, far from his home, under these alien stars, only one of which was Earth’s.
He didn’t know what to do, so he just kept working and drinking his paychecks away. One day blended into the next, and before he knew it, six months had passed since Darlene had walked out on him.
Paul was kicked back with a beer in the little apartment in Sunnyside when his halo pinged him. It said, “PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE—SOL SYSTEM.” The warm little buzz Paul had been working up went cold. Then he slammed his beer all the way down and cracked another one. The icon in his visual wasn’t going away.
It had to be a letter from his father, a man Paul couldn’t possibly see again.
There was no way Paul could pay for a trip back to Sol. There was also no such thing as a reverse indenture that he could sell himself into to get back. He knew; he had researched the subject. There was just the cold, hard fact that he was stuck on Ottawa 6 forever, trimming Purplewood trees. He drained the beer he was holding. Then he drained the next one. He kept drinking, in fact, until he could barely see.
Then he clicked on the icon. The message was simple:
Paul,
Your mother and I have received word that you found a woman on Ottawa 6. We wish you nothing but happiness and a long life together.
As you can imagine, this news has been hard on us. But you know Mother and I; we will always be proud of our star-travelling son and our eventual grandchildren.
When the day comes, you must send us images. We are curious about everything. We saw the picture you sent of Darlene (tell her we said hello); please send us images of your house, your friends, things that you do.
Your mother and I regularly search news items about Ottawa 6—there isn’t much, but we feel closer to you for looking.
Wish you were here; we miss you and pray for you.
Mother and Father
Paul erupted into violent, heaving tears when he was finished. Then he went to the bathroom and vomited the beers into the Plastone throne in his apartment. Collapsing in a heap on the cool tile floor, he wept himself to sleep. Needless to say, he didn’t make it into work that day. He didn’t make it into work the next day, either.
When the company sent a woman to check on him, she encountered a grizzled-looking, ghost named Paul with red-rimmed eyes. She asked if there was anything that she could do.
Paul thought, How about you give me my life back? How about you undo the hurt that Darlene laid upon me? How about you send me home to Hopefield?
What he said instead was, “I’m fine. Let the people at work know that I quit.”
She looked at him, clearly thinking that he was a bum, said, “OK,” and turned and left.
After her ground-car had faded down the road, Paul stood up and opened the jelly jar he had hidden on a shelf. It was his rainy-day fund he had started back when life was good and Darlene had graced these floors. As far as Paul could see, it
was a rainy day indeed. There were 645 creds in the pot—enough to get a taxi into Hope, grab a couple of meals, and stay a couple of days in a cheap motel.
Paul had come up with a plan. He called up a taxi icon on his halo. Then he waited the sixteen minutes it took for the taxi to arrive at his little apartment while he nursed a beer.
When the taxi nosed up in front of the house, Paul walked out and left the door open. He didn’t take a single thing from the apartment with him, except for his switchblade and a trash bag with his quilt from Mother and the scarf from long-lost Amy Brown.
As the taxi rolled toward Hope, Paul called up a green icon called “SERVICE.” He clicked on it and followed the instructions for “PRIOR SERVICE ENLISTEES.” At least, thought Paul, I have a chance in hell of getting back to Old Earth after another hitch.
Just like that, Paul was back in.
Of course, he had to report in to the nearest duty station for in-processing, and that just happened to be Det 2, H Co, 2-18 IN (Armored). Sergeant First Whitehead was waiting for him with a shit-eating grin on his face. Of course he was.
Three weeks later, Paul had orders for transport off-world. His excellent interstellar adventure had been postponed here on Ottawa, but not indefinitely. Paul had joined the ranks of those to whom the service was a home. He shouldered his duffel, again, and got on the cattle-car transport to anywhere.
Paul would have rather been anywhere but Juneau 3. After five months on-planet, the feeling was steadily mounting in him that he was going to die there. There had been just too many close calls, too many weird experiences. And Major Najibullah the Bomb Maker was still out there, smokin’ and jokin’. Paul needed a near-cig at the thought. He pulled out a Fortunate and lit it.
Today he was hanging out in the watchtower right by the barracks at Camp Kill-a-Guy. He wasn’t doing much of anything; his gear was square for tomorrow’s mission. The planning was already done and approved by higher.
The party in the morn was taking place at Combat Outpost Lagnam, in the middle of BFE (Bum-fuckin’ Egypt) and out toward the magical fish. The outpost was south of the Belt, in other words, and on the western side of the Zudnok River.
It was about noon, and the day was scorching hot, about forty degrees in the shade. Paul had been drinking water like a madman, and he sure was glad he wasn’t patrolling today. Mike had pinged his halo earlier on. He was broiling alive in the rice paddies out by Kas Warnoz. Paul could sympathize; he had humped those boonies himself just a couple of weeks ago.
Ping! went his halo, just as he took his last drag. It was the colonel. Paul clicked on his icon and got him directly. “Hey, Paul, where you at?”
“Up on the watchtower, sir, enjoying the sights.” Paul watched with deadened bemusement at a cruel entertainment Crusty and Dirty were engaged in, in the motor pool beneath him. They had caught some of the deadly, colorful “scorpions” and had put them into an ammo can. The scorpions were territorial and would fight to the death when two of them were caught in a space where there was no retreat. The two NCOs were betting on the result of the death match between “their” respective creatures.
“Rog, Paul, I’ll come up and sightsee with you.” The colonel’s icon clicked off. Paul checked his supply of smokes; the colonel would surely want to light up. Paul was curious what he wanted.
A few moments later, he heard the sounds of someone on the steps leading up to the tower. Ten seconds later, the colonel popped up onto the platform and joined Paul by the railing behind a pile of sandbags. They both looked at the mountain in the distance and at the antics of Crusty and Dirty. The colonel shook his head in bemusement.
Paul offered the colonel a near-cig. The colonel declined and pulled out his own pack. They both lit up and continued looking at the mountain. The air had an orange cast to it today, and the mountain was a curious pink color. Heat radiated off objects scattered around the camp. People who were walking around did so sluggishly, with bent shoulders. Only madmen and soldiers were out in weather like this.
The colonel broke the silence. “Going out tomorrow, Paul?”
Paul took a drag. “Yeah, to Lagnam; there’s been some trouble out there.”
The colonel, of course, knew all about it. A couple of nights ago, some shitheads had shot at the combat outpost there with an antiarmor rocket. The attackers had wounded some guys, and the bad dudes had run off into the night, laughing their asses off. So, Second Company was going to roll out there and see what they could see.
“You mind if I go with you? I’m getting bored sitting around out here.”
Paul’s antenna twitched. The colonel had to have an idea. “Hey, no problem, sir. We’ll party and have some good times.”
“Yeah, I was thinking…You know how there’s a rat trail out there? How about we set up an ambush along it?”
A “rat trail” was a path that bad guys used to bring in supplies and reinforcements to an area, like, say, the Belt. Paul was definitely interested. “Sounds good to me, sir. We’ll make some room for ya.”
They both finished their near-cigs and then went back into the barracks.
The next day, Second Company rolled out to Lagnam. Paul and the colonel talked with Bashir and told him the broad outline to their plan. If it worked, madness and chaos would ensue. If it didn’t work, they would just have a boring sleepover on a rocky desert plain. Either way, it beat sitting around at the camp, playing with themselves.
Second Company arrived with a convoy of ground-cars at Combat Outpost Lagnam, which was indeed situated in the middle of seemingly nowhere. They proceeded to set up camp outside the little square fortress’s walls. It was about 1500 hours local, four hours before full twilight.
Actually, “nowhere” was deceptive out here in the desert. There were many terrain features that didn’t appear on maps and, worse yet, appeared insignificant when viewed by micro feed. Nothing, in the end, really beat walking over the terrain to get a feel for it. The colonel and Paul were about to relearn that little fact that night.
Of course, going out for a stroll would have tipped off the bad guys and ruined Paul and the colonel’s scenario. So what ended up happening was unavoidable—but it still sucked.
After Second Company was settled down, Paul called over Bashir and, with the colonel, briefed him on what was going to happen that night.
Here was the plan, as they briefed to Bashir. Once it was full dark, the colonel and Paul would suit up and move out to a hill about a klick and a half north from the combat outpost. According to intel, the dissidents’ rat trail lay somewhere in between the four-hundred-meter-high hill in the distance and the small fortress.
Second Company would stay at outpost Lagnam and look for all the world like they were having a Boy Scout campout. If all the stars aligned, the colonel and Paul would spot any mule trains coming through the valley and give them the surprise of their short lives.
When the sun came up, Second Company could feel free to chase squirters and rummage through the dead for souvenirs.
That was the theory, anyhow.
In the few hours left of daylight, Paul and the colonel obsessed over what they should and shouldn’t bring. They were both mindful of the three-hundred-kilogram normal operating limit of their suits, but they both reasoned they only had one and a half klicks to cover and a mild, four-hundred-meter hill to climb. They were both experienced suit operators and infantrymen, and they both figured they could lay on some extra equipment. The reason they were going crazy about equipment was just in case they had a real fight up on the hill.
Paul wanted to bring extra ammo for the colonel’s grenade launcher. The colonel, in turn, wanted to bring a bulky laser range finder, on the off chance that they had to call in shuttle fire. The list grew. But hey, they figured, it was only a klick and a half.
Only a klick and a half: Paul would later regret those words.
The sun started to go down. Paul reached into his cams and produced a Fortunate, lit it, and inhaled. The smoke
tasted wonderful. Seeing as how he and the colonel would be suiting up soon, he was making up for tonight’s lost time.
His hand shook only slightly. In a suit, yeah, you could get messed up, but you didn’t feel nearly as naked as being in a metal storm with just your cams.
Paul was eager to get it on. This waiting business was the worst. The sun dropped below the horizon. Paul and the colonel stepped into their heavily weighted-down suits.
When he was engulfed by his suit and did his diagnostic checks, he noted that he was carrying 440 kilos, a tad bit over the recommended patrol weight. Paul knew that the max a suit could lift was 750, but a suit would require special bracing to do that. At 440, he was definitely going to be a little top-heavy. But hey, it was only a klick and a half, with a little climb up a hill. All his other readouts were green. The colonel pinged him for his readiness state. Paul said he was good to go.
When it was full dark, the two men moved out to go hunting.
Paul noticed that his suit was giving him strain feedback—what exerted the suit would also exert the operator. It was one reason that force infantry made sure they weren’t physical slouches. Yeah, a complete weakling could operate a suit just fine, but a heavily laden suit required strength to operate. Tonight looked as if it was going to be a workout, and the colonel and he had only moved about two hundred meters.
The colonel launched a micro, and within thirty seconds the feed came online into their halos. Everything looked clear, except there appeared to be a few small wadis crossing the plain en route to the hill. They kept moving north: the colonel in the lead, Paul in trail, in a sort of echelon left formation.
Wow, Paul thought. He had to hit the gym; his suit was really giving him some feedback about the weight. Paul could already feel his arms start to tingle with the exertion. He thought maybe they should have left some of this extra shit back at the camp with the ground-cars. But, checking his readout, they only had 750 meters to go.
He could make it—easy. Then he and the colonel started to hit the “negligible wadis” their remote sensors had detailed for them.
In the Valley Page 13