by Peter Telep
"Besides those couple of flybys, they didn't send in air support," Damphousse said. "Wonder why. Then again, maybe Shane's right. Maybe the Chiggies at homebase still don't know we're coming."
"See, the bad thing about this mission is that everything is bad. Intelligence is a joke. Equipment is a joke. Nathan'll tell you that when we find him. Our damned captain is a joke." Cooper let that ferment.
"If you think about it, most of this mission is just humping over the trail. The demolition job will take seconds while the getting there takes hours. Kind of like waiting in line at Lunar-Disney. From this point, waiting time is two hours. And the ride lasts like two minutes."
"They got Pirates of the Caribbean there?"
"Yeah."
A violent gust of cold wind struck Cooper, knocking him flat onto his back. Fortunately the crunchy snow held him in place. He looked right and saw that Damphousse had been downed as well. "What the hell was that?"
She moaned, sat up, and began brushing off snow. "Downslope wind. Kind of like a williwaw, but we're nowhere near the sea."
"You're talking Chig language, 'Phousse."
"A williwaw. It's like a real strong gust of wind that blows seaward from a coastline with mountains."
"Well, we got the mountain part of it covered," he said, then hauled himself up. "Maybe these winds are a special added attraction thrown in by the Aerotech terraformers."
"I don't think they're an added attraction. More like a screwup."
"Yeah, bet you're right."
The others had already reached the crest of the slope and were on their stomachs, surveying what Cooper guessed was the valley below. He and Damphousse finally, thankfully, trudged their last few steps, then they crawled up to take in what was at once an ominous and breathtaking sight.
"We're gonna blow that up?" Cooper asked.
sixteen
Nathan had suggested to Kyoko and Penny that they rest for a little while at the lookout before plotting a way to meet up with the rest of his squadron. Penny had quickly fallen asleep after what had been the reliving of a horrible moment. She was obviously less able than Kyoko to cope with murdering Captain Hasford. But Nathan also believed that the Japanese woman's calm demeanor was merely a guise.
The last thing he had remembered before drifting off was a mental image of Kyoko, an image of her on the aqueduct's bridgeway. She had worn a black silk robe, had carried a white long-stem rose, and had walked slowly toward him. He had frowned over the vision. Of course, he had often had dreams in which he and Kylen swam at the foot of a great waterfall, but these he deemed as simply physical desires manifested in fantasy. He refused to admit for more than a second that he was attracted to Kyoko, and maybe seeing her on the bridgeway was seeing his guilt come alive. In some ways Kyoko did remind him of Kylen; their names were even similar. Just how long has it been since I've kissed a woman? he had thought.
And now Nathan replayed Kyoko's image as he slowly grew more aware that he wasn't tucked into a nice little bed in his parents' Farmingville home. He wasn't even tucked into his bunk aboard the Saratoga. He was lying in a sleeping bag on top of an air mattress in a tiny tent below walls of stone on an alien planet. Life had not been very good to him recently.
"West, time to get up," he heard Kyoko say.
He yawned, rubbed the sleep grit from his eyes, and, not wanting to look at his watch phone, asked, "How long have we been sleeping?"
"About seven hours."
Slowly, he opened his eyes, half expecting the bright light of morning to come stabbing into his pupils. Then he remembered the forever twilight, and it suddenly felt as if he were getting up for 0500 reveille back in boot camp. Kyoko stood outside his tent, looking down at him, her long hair unbound and tossing like velvet fire in the breeze. He rubbed his eyes once more, slid out of his sleeping bag, then rose, feeling the full effects of the cold wind. He hopped up and down a bit in his bare feet, rubbing his arms. He had removed his environment suit for sleeping and now couldn't wait to get back into it. He saw Penny, whose mouth hung partially open and who was still wrapped tightly in her sleeping bag. "You don't happen to have a cup of hot cocoa handy, do you?"
At least he had managed to wipe the somber expression off Kyoko's face. "No, but I do have tea from London. The good stuff. Can't buy it at the PX. I'm heating the water now." She gestured with her head to a small pot filled with chunks of melting ice which had been placed on a Yukon M1950 field hot plate. "Don't get used to it, though. I think I only have enough charge for one more pot of water."
"We can use mine when yours is out," he said, then turned back to his tent. "I'll get cleaned up while we're waiting." Kyoko got the hint that he needed a little privacy and moved off to sit near the plate.
Because of the low temperature and the lack of bathing and sanitary facilities, the CWS instructor back on the Haldeman had said that keeping the body clean will not be easy. Any Marine who has spent any time at all on the battlefield, no matter what the temperature, will tell you that truth isn't the first casualty of war; personal hygiene is. But Nathan had always refused to let himself go to the elements.
With his canteen in one hand, a small, plastic cup in the other, he poured himself a little water, then dumped it onto his washcloth. He had mastered the art of cleaning his entire body with only two canteen cups of water, using half for soap and washing and half for rinsing. When he was finished, he brushed his teeth, donned his environment suit, then ran a battery-powered razor over his face. The CWS instructor had also said that in cold climates a beard or a mustache is a nuisance since it serves as a base for the buildup of ice from moisture in the breath and will mask the presence of frostbite. "Yeah, but some chicks dig 'em," Cooper had responded.
The scent of Kyoko's tea wafted on the wind and drew Nathan out of his tent. She handed him a canteen cup, and he breathed in the vapors for a long moment before actually taking a sip. When he did, a little bit of heaven came to Bulldog's Belly. "This is great," he told her.
"My grandmother would disagree. The water's mineral content is very high. Makes the tea a little bitter."
He regarded Penny. "Should we wake her?"
"No. She hasn't slept this long since it happened. Maybe talking about it helped. I'm not sure." Kyoko sat Indian-style and held her cup to her chin.
Moving gingerly, his gaze on his tea, Nathan took a seat opposite her. He thought about popping open an MRE, then struck down the thought. The food would just dampen his mood. "Have you been sleeping?"
"A little."
"Are you okay? I mean really okay? You seem to have taken it pretty well."
She lowered her gaze thoughtfully, then drew in a deep breath. "When I was a little girl, growing up in Tokyo, I came home from school one day. My father was there. He was supposed to be at work, but he was home. And I remember thinking, did I forget that today is a holiday? No, then school would be closed. And I remember seeing how red and swollen his eyes were, but his face was stiff. Then I knew that something bad had happened. And I'm not sure why, but I started to cry because maybe I had never seen my father look that way. And then he smacked my hand and told me to be silent, to show respect for the dead. And when we buried my mother, he would not let me cry. I wanted to so badly that when we came home that day, I went into my room and stayed there for hours. My pillow was soaked." Slowly, she raised her head to stare at him. "When you say that I have 'taken it pretty well,' Lieutenant West, you say so without having touched my pillow."
Tears welled in her eyes, and he cursed himself for striking a painful chord in her. "I'm sorry," he said, meaning it but guessing that the words were ineffectual.
"I don't want to offend or correct you. It's just my way." A tear escaped, and she turned shyly away.
"Anyone who makes tea this good could never offend me," he said.
She wiped the tear, then bowed her head. "Thank you."
Like the exhaust from a Hammerhead, a sudden wind tore past them, ruffling their hair and clothe
s and causing Nathan to almost spill his precious drink. Then it was gone. "I'll never get used to those."
"They are spirits making their rounds," Kyoko said.
He nursed his tea, gnawed by the fact that they had a lot of business to talk about. They needed to meet up with the fifty-eighth. But he wanted to forget about the Marine Corps for now. Kyoko intrigued him, and he believed the moment might be the only chance they would have to talk as civilians, as young people, not Marines. "So tell me about Charlie Stone. What makes you say he's a womanizer?"
"You said you knew him," she countered.
"Oh, I do. And I agree that he has an eye for the ladies. Did he, shall we say, try to put a target lock on you?" Nathan already knew that Stone had asked Kyoko out for drinks and that she had turned him down three times. He just wanted to hear her side of the story and take the conversation into much more interesting territory: her love life.
But Kyoko was as artful as she was beautiful. The simple yes or no answer that Nathan expected, followed by a brief summary of Charlie's failed attempts, did not come. "I'll respond to that with two questions. What makes you think I'll answer, and, why do you want to know?"
For a moment, Nathan wondered if Kyoko worked for the Judge Advocate General's office; she certainly had a lawyer's talent for manipulating a conversation. He answered her with a half shrug.
She unfolded her legs and rubbed a hip, wincing a little. "The cold is a bad tenant who refuses to leave your bones. My grandfather used to say that."
So much for her love life. He downed the rest of his tea and then tried another angle. "How did you go from a little girl in Tokyo to the United States Marine Corps?"
"My father works in the aerospace industry, and when I was fourteen he got transferred to California. I went with him, and we eventually became citizens. How I wound up in the Corps is something I don't like to talk about."
"A judge didn't sentence you to it, did he?" Nathan asked, alluding to Cooper Hawkes's path into the military.
She grinned weakly and shook her head. "Calling this a sentence is not far from the mark. By the way, I don't see a ring. Do you have a girlfriend?"
Just like that she had asked him, and his empty cup fell from his hand and his breath faltered. "Should I answer with a question?"
Kyoko tossed her head back to remove the hair from her face. "No, but you already have. And if you're thinking of asking why I think you'll answer, it's because I think you want to."
"I know that Charlie Stone asked you for drinks three times and you turned him down." He lifted his brow. "Why?"
"Answer for answer. Okay. Charlie's biggest problem is that he's a zoomie. I don't date zoomies."
"Why?"
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
He averted his gaze and smiled broadly. "You don't date zoomies."
"Did I say I wanted to date you?"
"No, but—"
"Then answer the question."
"What was it again?"
"Come on. Do you have a girlfriend?"
Nathan nodded. "Her name's Kylen Celina. She was a Vesta colonist. The Chigs got her now."
She pursed her lips and stared at him sympathetically. "That's why you asked if there were civvies down there in the aqueduct. You're looking for her."
"I keep wanting to believe. Sometimes it's hard, I guess."
"I tell my boyfriend back home to believe that the war will end, and I'll be with him. And he tells me the same thing. It's difficult."
"Guess I thought you didn't have—"
"You didn't ask. His name is James, and he's a graduate student in computer science. I haven't seen him in thirteen months."
"Strange how time stands still when you're doing a tour. I have this image of Kylen, and it doesn't change. And I have these dreams of how it'll be when we're finally together again, and in the dreams, all the time we spent away from each other has no effect on us. But if, I mean when we finally do meet, the time away is going to be there. And I know it's going to be awkward."
"After a year and half away from Tokyo, my father and I went to visit his parents. We were not family in that house. We were strangers and finally became guests. And things we should have known about them, small things but important ones, we didn't. I think they felt the same. Pictaphones can't replace being there."
Nathan glanced past her to the mountain wall and then beyond to the stars. "I wish I could talk to her. Just once. Let her know I'm all right. And that I'm coming for her. I won't stop looking."
"Yours is a strong heart. Rare to find. Hard to keep. Don't change, Lieutenant," she said.
"Thanks." He stood and stretched. "I'm sorry if this went somewhere out of bounds. It's just, you ever find someone who's easy to talk to? It's like you don't need to put on the fake face and fake voice. I don't know. I just got that feeling from you."
And that embarrassed her. She nervously set down her cup and wouldn't look at him. He extended a hand and helped her to her feet. "We should wake Penny now."
"I'm awake," Penny said.
Nathan exchanged a look with Kyoko, who somehow managed to appear even more embarrassed. "There's some tea for you, Penny," he said.
The lieutenant slid out of her sleeping bag, stood, then did the same jumping bean dance that Nathan had. "Have we decided our next move?" she asked, putting Nathan at ease. If Penny had heard the conversation, she wasn't letting on. Good.
"No," Kyoko answered as she dismantled her small tent. "But I think West's idea to get to the north side of the duct by slipping under it won't work."
Nathan had begun to pack his own gear, but he stopped and regarded her, puzzled. "Why? It beats the hell out of trying to climb around it."
"The mountains offer us far more cover. Not only that, but what looks like frozen, rocky ground down there is actually a lake. Heat thrown off from the structure has thinned the ice, making it unstable."
He snorted "What's the matter, you can't swim?"
"Swimming in thirty-three-degree water sans a dry-suit is begging for hypothermia," Kyoko said with a slight smirk.
"You just don't want to climb," Penny added.
After giving strong tugs on the nylon straps that bound his tent to his rucksack's aluminum frame, Nathan answered, "Hell yes. Anyone falls, it's gonna be me. And if we do climb, what's our ETA?"
"I've made three radar maps of these mountains. I'm thinking that about sixteen hours of climbing should put us there," Kyoko reported.
"Sixteen hours?" Nathan asked incredulously. "My squadron could have the duct blown by then. If they hit the projected DZ, they should already be in position and doing intel."
"We better pray that they either discover the prisoners' PLBs and delay the mission or that we get to them before they carry it out," Kyoko said.
"But we're still not going to climb for sixteen hours straight, are we?"
Kyoko looked at Penny, who nodded.
Nathan's jaw dropped. "You guys are crazy."
"We'll take breaks," Kyoko promised.
"Why don't you try picking up the fifty-eighth's PLBs again? You never know. This time you might get a reading," Penny said. "Be nice to know all the climbing we're gonna do isn't for nothing."
As he had many times before, Nathan thumbed on his digital compass and tried to get a reading on anyone from the fifty-eighth. The display read: Signal not present or out of range. Then he adjusted the frequency and picked up the strong signals coming from the prisoners inside the aqueduct. "My DC's still working right. We just gotta get closer."
Penny looked up in awe at the snowcapped mountains fencing off the west side of the aqueduct. "Well, West. You wanna get closer?" She pointed at the daunting walls of ice and rock. "It ain't no yellow brick road. But it's all we got for now."
"I'm glad you guys are so confident," he said.
Kyoko buckled on her sit-harness, anchors clipped onto and draping from it. "There's a fine line between being confident and desperate."
"So which are you
?"
"I'm not sure."
Nathan nodded. "It would help if you lied."
"What's the matter, got a fear of heights?" Kyoko asked, doing her best impression of him.
"I'm a pilot."
She cocked a thumb over her shoulder. "Up there you are nothing but humble."
seventeen
Gathering intelligence, though an important part of any mission, was for Cooper a tedious, miserable job best left to pogues in the rear echelon. But those pogues couldn't get into the positions necessary for a close look at enemy operations. The body-fat ratios and high cholesterol levels of those associated with such work made them vulnerable. Thus, they had decided to stick an icicle to Cooper's neck, saying, "Go find out what we wanna know, sucker."
All of that (especially the part about body-fat ratios and high cholesterol levels) was far from the truth, but for some reason believing it made Cooper feel better about the mission. He and Teddy had moved stealthily down the aqueduct side of the slope to a long bank of snow about fifty meters down from the crest. The bank was the last vestige of what had once been a significant avalanche. Using the piled-up snow for cover, they had dug a shallow but extremely functional bunker with a rectangular viewing slot through which they could photograph the facility and record arrivals and departures from the airfield. The rest of the squadron had divided to establish watch posts on the flanks.
Cooper sniffled, turned away from the viewing slot, and asked, "Hey, Teddy. You like music?"
Teddy, his face cast in a green glow by the screen of the Electronic Targeting Coordinator balanced on his lap, gazed earnestly at the instrument and said, "I don't know. What's music?"