by Leo Champion
“Yo, Muls,” said Kiesche now. It was about four in the afternoon, ship time, of the day after their initial lecture on Dinqing. Both men were sitting in their bunks, Mullins’ laptop open.
He’d been reading a book on Dinqing history; recorded, it apparently went back almost ten thousand years. Something like the Chongdin Empire had existed in basically its immediately-pre-human-contact form for thousands of years before the first proto-Sumerians in the Fertile Crescent had gotten started figuring out basic agriculture.
“Kiesche, what’s up?”
“You’re a radio man, you guys hear shit.”
Supposedly. Mullins was too new at his job to be really part of that network yet, though.
Still, couldn’t admit that.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Know what they’re gonna have us do on this Qing place?”
Kiesche was a rough man, a convicted – he’d pleaded guilty and confessed it to his Legion classmates on the ship from Earth to Chauncy, without apparently much in the way of remorse – rapist. Mullins had his own opinion of how dumb the guy really was, but Private Jeff Kiesche certainly didn’t consider himself a potential rocket scientist.
And as it happened, Mullins had heard something from company signals chief MacGallagher.
“Could be wrong,” he said to the guy on the bunk above him. “But word is we’re going to do urban counterinsurgency.”
“In a town like Roanoke?”
“In a city twenty times the size, if they send us to Vazhao.” That was the ancestral capital of the Chongdin Empire. It had been a city of about three quarters of a million Qings before America had bought out the original Chongdin rulers.
Now, drawn in by the jobs created from early-stage industrialization and driven from the countryside by agricultural mechanization causing mass unemployment among unskilled rural laborers, its greater metropolitan area was a chaotic twelve million.
Endless academic papers had been written on the economic impacts of colonization; there were certainly enough cases to view, with over thirty natively-inhabited worlds colonized between the three big powers and the various lesser ones. When humans came, there was massive disruption.
Where aggressive, competing post-industrial societies show up amidst pre-agrarian or feudal primitives, thought Mullins, serious economic disruptions are inevitable.
Policymakers, so far as Mullins could tell, did not care. Eaties were eaties and non-citizen colonists barely a step above them.
“Vaz-how? What’s there – there human chicks there?”
“C-visas and other humans, in all the good jobs.”
“What about whores? You hear anything about whether Vaz-how has whores in it?”
“Probably three million Qing chicks who’ll fuck you for five dollars.”
“Fuck you. I mean human bitches.”
“Probably.”
“Fuck yeah.”
* * *
They were in transit for eleven standard days, including a twelve-hour stop in orbit above New Chinon, until they arrived at Adam’s World.
For Croft, in his second-class cabin – a room to himself, however small, unlike the cattle cars most of the enlisted men were packed into – it had been a boring eleven days. Reading up on Dinqing, learning the intermediary language, the interlang. Chilling with the battalion’s other officers and the other second- and first-class passengers, mostly well-heeled colonial subjects on business trips.
Getting laid with one nice black-haired C-visa, since Svetlana was now a memory and he did have a dick. A cute girl a year or two older than him, whose parents had come from the disputed Balkans. Nice woman with a hot accent and a business degree from the University of the Colonies, a distributed online school.
She’d loved hearing his stories of combat, although to be honest the ambush in the Wild South had been a nightmare and the skirmishing south of Roanoke then the assault on Bergschloss had been more of a clusterfuck than the honest war he’d gone to West Point in the hopes of. He’d romanticized the brutal action to her, though, and it had gotten him enjoyable time in his tiny cabin.
But now they were leaving A-Space in the Adam’s World system, and speakers blared over the ship, fuzzily. “All 1/4/4 officers to Deck Four Conference Room Three, please. All 1/4/4 officers…”
Croft took his combat pack and his duffel. As an officer he got a personal shipping allowance that he’d used some of. But that stuff was somewhere in a cargo hold, and would be taken care of by ship and station freight crews. He wouldn’t see it until they reached Dinqing.
He hustled through passageways to a lift, rode it with a few other officers down to Deck Four, the lowest of the Star of Dantilus’ passenger decks; there were two larger decks’ worth of cargo space below that.
Conference Room Three was a large room just off the wide corridor that led to one of the ship’s primary airlocks, and not far from it. Rows of plastic chairs were stacked in the back of the room, but someone had set up a large urn of coffee next to some plastic cups on a table to the side. It was about ten in the morning, ship time.
Before long the other officers, and the – too many, the losses on New Virginia had been too damn heavy – senior NCOs who were filling in as platoon leaders, had filled the room. A ship’s officer, a tall redhaired woman with two golden circles on each sleeve of her dark-blue uniform, stepped up to address them.
“Gentlemen, thank you for your attention.”
The buzz of conversation died down.
“As most of you would know, we’re scheduled for arrival in the Adam’s World system today; in fact, we translated out of A-Space about forty-five minutes ago. Your battalion had been intended to transfer off this ship to one of the orbital stations, to await transport to your final destination of Dinqing.”
Croft exchanged glances with Gardner, next to him. Had some local emergency come up on Adam’s World that 1/4/4 would be sent into action against? That did happen, from time to time for passing-through units.
“Unfortunately, someone – it’s believed to be local secessionists – has sabotaged the power units of that orbital facility, shut down everything but emergency life support. The place has been evacuated.
“This ship, the Star of Dantilus, has a schedule to keep. Unfortunately, that means we can’t stick around until your transfer ship gets here, so shuttles have been arranged. They’ll be arriving in about an hour and you’ll have to wait groundside.”
There were a few subdued groans. Atmospheric shuttle rides were never fun. But most of 1/4/4’s officers were professionals and Croft for one kept his annoyance to himself.
“Gentlemen, you should have your men get ready to pack and go groundside.”
* * *
“This is where the dinosaurs are, I hear,” said Diego Mondragon as they crowded through the airlock into the shuttle. The slim, handsome Mexican had the elegant forked moustache favored by the Mexican upper class, and spoke English with a fluency that implied he’d learned it before enlisting in the Legion. Why he had, Mullins had no idea. He’d never volunteered it and you didn’t ask.
“One of them,” said Mullins. A number of worlds had fauna you could reasonably describe as ‘dinosaurs’.
“Off the ship, people! Move your pendejo asses!” a copper-skinned senior sergeant from First Platoon was shouting. “Move!”
The shuttle was a big one, whose insides were a dirty dull beige. The seats, laid out in a three-five-three configuration, were faded brown. No attempt had been made to conceal the pipes and wire conduits that ran along the ceiling with stenciled black lettering here and there; this thing was an obvious trans-orbital cattle car, no more.
“Other side first, troops. You know the drill!” another NCO was yelling. “Get to the other side first, we don’t got all day!”
Mullins, pack and radio on his back, rifle slung across his chest and his big unwieldy duffel bag bumping against his legs, made his way behind Mondragon to an exit row and along that to a three-
seat. Mondragon took a bulkhead – there were no windows in it – seat, stuffing his pack and duffel in the center as others had been doing. Mullins put his own pack and duffel on top of Mondragon’s, sat down with his rifle between his legs. Strapped himself in with both the lap and sash belts; shuttle rides could get bumpy.
It took a while more before the large shuttle had been filled. Then there were hisses, grinding sounds as the airlocks closed, more hissing – apparently a valve was leaking somewhere, just great – a lurch, and then the sickening freefall sensation of zero gravity as the shuttle detached from the rotating ship.
Only for a moment. Then ‘down’ felt like backwards as thrusters roared, shaking the cattle-car shuttle as though it were going to fall to pieces. Mullins and Mondragon both placed steadying hands on the stacked bags in the middle seat. Across the aisle Private Mandvi was murmuring something unhappy to himself in Hindu, his eyes closed.
The shaking slowed after a few minutes, and nauseous zero-gravity returned. Nobody in the cockpit bothered to announce anything, and of course the lowest-bidding contractor who’d built this superannuated cattle-car hadn’t bothered to install even the most elementary back-seat or armrest displays.
From forwards in the shuttle, there was the hurking sound of someone emptying his stomach, followed by explosive curses in at least four languages from the people around him.
Normally, when you were going down into an atmosphere, they didn’t feed you for at least twelve hours before for this reason. Apparently this particular descent was unscheduled; nobody had known, until they’d left A-Space a couple of hours ago, that (according to the most prevalent rumor) someone had blown up the world’s orbital transfer stations.
Just great.
The vile smell of puke reached Mullins, and he focused on breathing carefully through his mouth and swallowing constantly so he didn’t vomit himself. Others weren’t so wise, or so lucky, and a chain reaction of vomiting spread through the shuttle, the crap hanging in mid-air.
No damn hand vacuums on this rattletrap piece of shit, either. Of course there wouldn’t be.
There was another solid vibration for a moment as the shuttle adjusted course with an attitude thruster.
“They. Could. Have. At. Least. Told. Us. How. Long. It. Would. Take,” Mandvi spat across the aisle to Mullins, his fingers gripping the armrests for dear life.
Flakes and pieces of red puke mixed with bile flew lazily along the aisle between them. Mandvi gritted his teeth and Mullins forced himself to keep swallowing.
Another brief vibration as an attitude thruster fired. Then the main thrusters roared again, shaking and vibrating the shuttle and making speech impossible for a long few seconds. The torrents of puke in the air flew backwards and Mullins ducked his head behind the seat to avoid getting hit with it. Other people, toward the back of the shuttle, swore as the stuff reached them.
“Won’t last forever,” he tried to reassure Mandvi, his own stomach turning somersaults. “Just hold on.”
Mandvi nodded his head toward his left hand, in a death grip on the armrest.
“What,” Mandvi asked, “does it look like I am fucking doing?”
* * *
Presently, after bouncing and jouncing along a long planetside runway, the shuttle eased to a halt. It had been forty-five minutes of hell, vomit and flying bags, although Mullins and Mondragon had been good at keeping theirs held down. The air was fetid and the floor, especially further toward the rear of the big shuttle, was greased with puke and the odd puke-caked rucksacks and combat packs. At least everyone, so far as Mullins had seen, had kept their weapons secure.
Finally, he thought, as hissing hydraulic sounds announced imminent replacement of atmosphere.
No such luck. Secondary engines engaged and the shuttle began to taxi, for what seemed like an interminable amount of time.
“We going to get fresh air or what?” Mondragon growled as they slowly eased across landing pads.
Mullins actually knew something about Adam’s World. His second professional assignment, as a newly-hired junior copywriter at a Boston advertising agency, had been for the Adam’s World Ranchers’ Cooperative, extolling the benefits of dinosaur meat to skeptical American customers.
The executive running the account had been big-into research, so Mullins had spent his first week on the account immersing himself in everything about dinosaur meat harvested from the jungle world. Starting with how the ‘ranchers’ were really industrial-scale hunting operations and the ‘cooperative’ was actually a corporate consortium. Dinosaur meat tasted good, too, even if it had failed to really catch on as more than an occasional delicacy in the continental North American market. The Australian states liked it, though.
But the relevant point right now was the climactic data he’d noted in passing and now remembered. When those doors opened, depending on what latitude on the planet they’d landed at, it was going to be hot and humid, or—
The shuttle came to a halt.
There was a final wheeze of hydraulics and the large shuttle’s two side-airlocks opened up.
Argh, Mullins thought, as a wave of brutal planetside air washed in.
Or it was going to be north of a hundred and ten degrees hot and murderously humid.
Just great.
Chapter Three
Heat and humidity blasted Croft as he descended the portable stairway from the shuttle. The port itself wasn’t much different to the ones on Earth, Chauncy and New Virginia; function required spaceports to have the same massive concrete expanses and operating facilities. There was a two-story building not far away, please may it have climate control, the wall of its upper story thick glass.
In the other directions there were more shuttles; another large one, possibly the one carrying the other half of the battalion, came screaming in now, bouncing to a landing as engines whined. The skies were heavily overcast and past the pads there was a cleared area between the concrete and high, thick jungle.
An armored yellow bulldozer sat in the cleared area, next to a truck that a work-crew of men in reflective orange vests were loading brush and logs into the back of.
The heat was excruciating and the humidity was brutal. Following Gardner and Nakamura, Croft double-timed over toward the building, where there was a large revolving door. Clearly it’d been designed for people carrying luggage; he didn’t have a problem fitting through it with his duffel, pack and gun.
The inside, thank God, was air conditioned. It was a plain entrance room, scuffed brown linoleum floor with a line of water coolers against one side. A wide stairway led upwards to what was probably a concourse, and a sign said ‘TERMINAL 2’.
Senior Lieutenant Gardner took Croft aside after they’d both had a short drink, as the officers finished disembarking and the enlisted men began to.
“We’ve got about eighteen standard hours to kill in this place,” the company XO said. “I think we can arrange a little practice time with the twenty-fives, if the higher-ups agree. Give the grunts something to do and familiarize them.”
“I like that idea, sir.”
There wasn’t a lot of space in the entrance area and a flow of enlisted men was starting to come in, so the two officers headed upstairs to the concourse Croft had expected. It was functional and not classy, the sort of thing you got in the colonies; every Earthside intraplanetary terminal he’d ever seen was far nicer, with at least some attention given to aesthetics and comfort.
This place was a big hall maybe two hundred feet long, its floor the same well-used linoleum as the entrance area. Along the left side were banks of plain wire chairs, rows and rows of them. The other side seemed to have offices and a few fast-food places. Several dozen civilians with luggage, including a few families, uneasily watched the blue-shirted soldiers begin to fill the area.
The officers and senior NCOs had been briefed on the bumpy, unpleasant flight down: the battalion had about eighteen hours groundside. Take passenger waiting space if it was availa
ble, otherwise storage areas or something would be lined up. Get the men food and keep them out of trouble.
On his right wrist, Croft had a watch – a West Point graduation gift from his mother – that could tell the local time, by way of receiving a satellite signal, of whatever moderately-developed-or-higher world he was on. He’d checked it on landing, but the thing hadn’t synchronized. He checked it again now: 6:09 pm, it said.
Great, a six-hour difference. It had been a little past eleven am ship time when they’d left the Star of Dantilus and the descent had taken forty-five minutes; people’s body clocks were at about midday.
He wondered what time local sunset was, and how long the night would be. Damnit. Travel between worlds was never good for your circadians, especially with stuff like gravitational and atmospheric differences thrown in to stress the body out further.
This unwanted little planetside layover was only going to mess with everyone’s systems that much more; New Virginia time to ship time – North American Eastern Standard, across all US ships and off-planet facilities – to Dinqing time, in sixteen days, would have been bad enough for troops who might well be sent into action the day they arrived on Qing.
Join the military and see new worlds, they’d said. Except he wasn’t going to see much more of this one than a plain terminal like the ones you found on every second-rate colony world. Too bad. A little dinosaur hunting might have been fun.
A senior sergeant from Battalion HQ appeared.
“Major Ramos requests you guys’ presence over here, sirs.”
Ramos was the acting battalion commander, assigned from the division staff after a traitor’s Claymore mine had wiped out pretty much the entirety of 1/4/4’s senior leadership outside of Bergschloss.
“Thanks, Senior Sergeant,” said Gardner.
Croft headed off with him to join the other officers, while more enlisted men filed into the terminal.
* * *