by Peter Telep
And his third mistake was failing to hear the rumbling that continued after the explosions. He fired another couple of rounds, then felt a trickle on his face. Was it raining? Snowing? He lowered his rifle and stared up at the slope. And his jaw dropped. He tore off his NVGs and stared at it with unenhanced eyes.
A great wave of falling snow was coming at him, throwing up a halo of mist that rose some two or three meters to blur away the stars.
"Cooper! Run!" someone shouted.
For a moment he found it difficult to turn away from the great spectacle. The ground trembled, and the rumble increased. An advance wave of mist blew into his eyes. He felt locked in the moment, the key broken off, the snow ready to consume him.
God had come to the mountain.
"Cooper!"
He realized what the hell he was doing and started running. What he still didn't realize was that the effort was futile. He was about seventy-five yards from the slope's foot when he looked back even as the raging, waist-high wall of snow slammed into him, knocked him down, buried him, and then swept him away.
Though he had only been alive for six years since leaving his gestation tank in Philadelphia, Cooper had managed to accumulate a great wealth of memories and sensations. However, he had nothing to compare to the present feeling of being caught in a raging rush of snow. Much stronger than a riptide, the great force drove him, tossing a leg out here, an arm out there. With what he thought could be his last effort, he pushed his back and head up, gasped for air, and got it. Then a fresh wave of ice fragments collided with his head and forced him back under.
After what he guessed had been slightly less than a minute, he came to a halt, and the landscape settled around him. With a groan formed deep in the back of his throat, Cooper struggled up, and his head came free. Cold, wet, and crusted with snow, he drew in a long breath of the chilly air and exhaled a thank you to whoever was listening. He closed his eyes and just breathed, feeling a soreness in his neck, a stiffness in his legs.
Then he heard a scraping sound and opened his eyes to find Teddy, entrenching tool in hand, crawling up toward him. "Don't move, Lieutenant."
Cooper grimaced. "What? No 'how ya doin'?' No 'you all right?"'
"Obviously you're alive," Teddy said sarcastically. "And we've no time for pleasantries. Enemy air response is on its way."
"As predicted," Cooper mumbled, then he felt the snow around him loosen a bit. He jerked back and forth, and his torso and arms came free.
Directing his efforts to Cooper's legs, Teddy said, "You nearly lost your life. Why did you hesitate?"
And Cooper hesitated answering the question. How to explain it? "I guess 'cause it was beautiful in a strange way. So much power, I mean."
"I still don't understand," Teddy confessed.
Cooper grinned wanly. "To tell you the truth, neither do I." And then his legs were free. He climbed over the fresh mound of snow, feeling as if he was emerging from a half-hour session in a giant food processor operated by Shane. He crawled after Teddy for what had to be twenty meters. The churned snow slowly tapered off into the plateau between slopes, and then he came upon the others, who had also been struck down but by a far less massive wall of snow. Everyone appeared shaken and dusted with snow but all right.
Teddy helped him to his feet, then said, "What? No thanks?"
Cooper felt his lips curl. "Thanks, bro."
"Could've stayed where you were," Shane said through a shudder, her nose never looking more crimson. "'Cause we're headed back into this snow."
He frowned for a moment, but then it clicked. And he didn't like it one bit. "We're gonna hide from the fighters here?"
"Didn't you go to boot the same place I did?" Shane asked him.
"Yeah, but—"
"If we move out now, we might as well wave in Chiggie fire."
He folded his arms over his chest. "So we're gonna dig our own graves?"
Still shivering, she rose to meet his gaze. "You wanna leave? Go right ahead. I'm too tired and too damned cold to argue with you." She tossed a look to Wang. "What's the word from up top?"
Wang, ever the lookout, said, "No movement. Chigs and wireheads that made it are probably headed back."
"Yeah, so the flyboys can mop us up," Damphousse put in.
Shane glared at her. "You wanna go with Hawkes?"
Shaking her head, Damphousse turned away, muttering, "I've never seen a mission go this bad."
"Hey, everybody. Come on," Nathan urged. "We gotta move and move now."
Kyoko breathed a loud sigh. "Story of our lives."
And within five minutes they had donned their environment, helmets, keyed on their rebreathers, and concealed themselves thoroughly beneath the snow with the aid of Teddy. The silicate had offered to be last to bury himself, insisting that he would simply burrow his way into a drift. The cold and temporary lack of oxygen would have no long-term effects on him.
Since the battery on his suit's warmer had long since run out of juice, Cooper lay in his white cocoon, fighting off the shakes, staring at the dark mound which blanketed the plexi of his helmet. The only time he had felt as vulnerable had been during his black Op on Tigris. He had been grazed by Chig fire and sprawled out as the aliens had approached him. A victorious battle against unadulterated fear had saved his life back then, permitting him to wait until the aliens were close enough. And then he had fired quickly and hadn't blinked until it was over. Though Cooper presently felt that same fear rising up his spine, he doubted he could fend it off with the same vigor he'd had on Tigris.
A Chig fighter streaked overhead; the muffled sound of its thrusters came softly, then loudly, then faded. Another fighter tailed seconds behind the first. And then another and another and another until Cooper imagined that there was no more twilight sky left, just an amazingly complex air traffic jam of aliens out to get him. It took tremendous willpower not to push up through the snow for a look. He repressed the urge repeatedly as he listened to his breath, to his heartbeat, and then to a voice which sounded remarkably like Colonel McQueen. "Hawkes, you've been a whiner during this entire mission. You and I should provide an example to natural-borns, an example that illustrates that we are not who they think we are. But you are not doing that. You are demonstrating that the stereotype is correct. When will you learn that your actions not only speak for you; they speak for all us?"
Cooper closed his eyes tightly and tried to silence the voice, but then he realized that was impossible. The damned voice was his own.
twenty-one
Nathan listened as Shane spoke tentatively into the comlink. "Okay, Wang, Mister 404. Give me SRR and MT reports. And pray our buddies aren't decrypting this."
"Tracker zone's clean," Wang said. "Except for me scratching an itch on my leg, and Cooper scratching an itch, uh, somewhere else."
"Short Range Radar indicates nothing in the bubble, but I must point out that the enemy knows we are so equipped and may be operating on the fringe," the silicate said evenly.
Shane paused, Nathan assumed, to consider the reports. He was considering them, too, wondering how much longer the squadron would stay buried. Two and a half hours had already passed, and during most of that time he had heard nothing. True, the Chigs had been quite determined, but they, like the fifty-eighth, were certainly operating with limited resources and contending with the occasional solar disturbances and the purported chemical in the atmosphere which wreaked havoc with scans and communications.
"West?" Shane called on his private channel.
"What's up?"
"About six hours away is a small tunnel system that'll give us good cover. I'm thinking we'll send the silicate off first for a recon."
"Kyoko knows the mountains in this area better than us. Maybe she can take us someplace closer."
"Ask her. Secured channel, please. I don't want Hawkes butting into this. And Nathan, do you know what happened to them?"
"It was a mutiny," he replied. "I'll tell you about it on the wa
y out of here. And believe me. When I'm done, you're gonna hate this mission even more."
"Great," Shane moaned.
Nathan dialed up Kyoko's link. "Hey. Got any tea?"
"What?" Kyoko asked, sounding tired.
"Forget it. Shane knows of a good spot for a bivouac, but it's a six-hour hike. Know of somewhere closer?"
"After we made our insertion, our second biv was about two hours due east from here. There's a trio of slopes. On the leeward side of the middle slope there's a wide ledge just below a roof of ice. The Chigs won't be able to get a visual on us beneath that cornice, but now that they know we're on planet, you can bet they'll be scanning heavily."
"That could be true. But they certainly cut corners on their last search and destroy."
"Trust me. When they think it's worth it, they'll scan us. And they'll find us. Pray for solar activity."
"Well, we can't stay here. I'd rather go down fighting than freezing to death."
"Then let's go."
In the minutes that followed, Shane sent out Teddy on a cursory recon, after which the silicate reported that the AOA was devoid of enemy fighters and ground personnel. The squadron moved out at double-time, and Nathan still had to contend with the knives of soreness which jabbed at his ankles with every footfall. While he had been exceedingly lucky not to have broken any bones when the rope had been cut and he had dropped along with Kyoko to the mountain's base, he presently experienced more than enough pain to be continually reminded him of that ordeal.
Kyoko had badly sprained one of her arms, had smashed her cheek on a chunk of ice, which had left her with a purpling bruise there, and had, like Nathan, sprained both of her ankles. But she suffered in near silence, complaining far less than a certain other member of the squadron would have.
Nathan began to tell Shane the twenty-first's story, but Kyoko cut him off, insisting she would tell all once they had reached cover. She said it was her duty and that everyone deserved to hear it at once. After that, Nathan found himself sticking close to her, sensing a connection between them that he couldn't ignore or resist. They had shared the intimacy of combat, the too-intimate loss of a fellow Marine, and the knowledge that their personal lives were not so different. Was there a growing friendship or something more? He knew very well how he felt. But thinking about it anymore would bring the guilt crashing down. Besides, they could never be anything more than fellow Marines. The war seemed bent on ruining relationships.
At two hours, two minutes into the hike, they arrived at the ledge, a broad, flat sheet of rock that appeared to have been artificially chiseled into the slope. The overhang of ice formed a natural awning whose underside bore a ferocious-looking set of icicle teeth, some nearly a meter long. Nathan dropped his heavy pack with a sigh, then turned to watch Cooper break off an icicle from the cornice and put the tip in his mouth.
"You idiot," Shane told him. "That hasn't been sterilized."
"Tastes better this way," Cooper said between licks.
"You get sick, and we're leaving you," Shane threatened.
Cooper raised his brow. "Promise?"
Shane flashed him a look of disgust, then turned away to crouch down before her pack.
"How are you feeling?" Nathan asked Kyoko.
She twisted off the cap on her canteen and offered him a sip, which he declined. "My arm is still killing me. But I think the walking actually helped my legs."
Nathan nodded. "If you need—"
"I'm all right," she insisted. "But thanks." Then she faced the others. "If it's okay with you, before we eat or do anything else, I want to bury Penny on the other side of the slope."
"I hate to sound gruesome," Cooper began. "But if we bury her in snow, won't she thaw out in the spring?"
"There are no seasons here," Wang said. "Temp hovel's around zero degrees Celsius, but twenty-knot winds make it feel a lot colder."
Teddy, who had yet to set down Penny's body, said, "Lieutenant Iwata. I am ready whenever you are."
The service for Penny felt a bit rushed, not only because of the awkwardness of death but because everyone had been recently reminded by Wang just how cold it was. Before they covered Penny's body with snow, Kyoko took one of the lieutenant's dog tags for herself, and, following SOP, placed the remaining one in Penny's mouth. Nathan wondered if Kyoko would shed a tear for her friend, but then he remembered the story of her mother's death. With glazed eyes and a jaw of steel, the bruised woman said a final goodbye to her friend.
Back on the ledge, Yukon M1950 field hot plates were fired up, and it was Damphousse who found her voice and broke the forced silence. "I have a Chicken Chow Mein MRE that I'm willing to trade."
"Give you a Country Fried Chicken Pieces for it," Wang offered.
"Country Fried? Those things taste like they were thruster fried," Cooper said.
"Make your stupid deals, then let's get down to the real business of saving our lives," Shane said, extinguishing grins all around. She stared blankly at the open MRE container in her hands, then, finally, withdrew the biodegradable fork and stabbed at a piece of meatloaf.
Resigned to his bland-tasting Vegetable Medley in Garden Cream Sauce, Nathan joined the circle that had formed on the ledge. He sat between Kyoko and Cooper, wishing the latter Marine had spent more time with the monitors learning how to eat quietly.
"It's your show," Shane said, glancing tiredly at Kyoko.
After a long pause, Kyoko launched into a summary of the twenty-first squadron's doomed mission on Bulldog's Belly. Nathan studied the faces of the others, watching Shane's, Wang's, and Damphousse's eyes widen when Kyoko revealed that the aqueduct was also a POW camp for over five hundred Earth Forces personnel. Wang told Kyoko that he, too, had picked up some of the prisoners' PLBs, but he had thought that the signals were a glitch caused by solar activity or a chemical disruption.
Cooper had a more pronounced reaction to Kyoko's story. He bolted to his feet, whirled around to face the ledge, then, with what had to be all of his might, he threw his empty MRE container into the wind. It tumbled out of sight. "We came all the way here to blow up this goddamned thing, and now you're tellin' me it's full of our people?"
Kyoko nodded and continued the story, shocking all of them when she revealed how she and Penny had killed Captain Hasford after he had killed Lieutenants Greenberg and Van Buren. She finished by telling Shane that if she had to be placed under arrest, it was all right, that it was, after all, Shane's duty.
"I was gonna arrest them," Nathan said the instant Kyoko finished. "But I realized that the brass who ordered those prisoners sacrificed are the ones who oughta be locked up. We got one name: Lieutenant General Osborne."
"You're damned right," Cooper said, his eyes full of fire as he drew his pistol. "If that fat pogue were here, I'd be splattering his brains all over this ice." He took aim at the wall.
"Save it, Hawkes," Shane said. "We can bitch and moan all we want about how bad this Op is, but that doesn't get us any closer to a decision. We gonna do this? Or are we gonna walk away from it?"
Cooper returned his pistol to its holster and said, "I'm for walkin' away. Right now."
"I think he's right," Damphousse said.
Raising a hand, Nathan looked to Shane and said, "Wait a minute. You're asking if we're gonna do this. You mean blow the duct with the prisoners still inside?"
She answered in her patented monotone. "That's exactly what I mean."
Cooper's eyes threatened to bulge out of his head. "I can't believe you'd even consider that!" Then he gestured with his head to Kyoko. "You're as screwed up as her captain was."
"Shane, they might be our orders, but you gotta know they're wrong," Nathan said in a far more milder tone than Cooper's. "Is this aqueduct worth five hundred lives?"
"The brass already thinks so," she said.
"What if I were in there?" Nathan challenged.
She opened her mouth, drew in a long breath, about to say something, but then she just closed her eyes.
Abruptly, she answered, "You're right. I know you're right. But I'm trying to see the big picture. We can't just think about ourselves. We have to think about everyone back home." Slowly, she opened her eyes and continued. "It's the old story. Every soldier who got into this war got in knowing the risks. It isn't our fault the aqueduct is a POW camp. And if we walk away now, maybe this facility will continue to produce food for the Chigs. And, in the long ran, it'll be partly responsible for us losing the war."
Nathan rose. "If you still wanna blow the duct with the prisoners inside, I have a feeling you'll have to do it alone."
At that, the silicate, who had been quietly observing the conversation, spoke up. "Lieutenant West. You do not speak for me. If Captain Vansen continues with the mission, then I will follow her. That is my duty."
"I guess that's all of our duties," Damphousse said. "Whether we like it or not. We keep talking like we all got a choice." She shifted her gaze to Shane. "Thanks for asking for our opinions, but it's still not our choice. It's yours."
"Yeah, it might be her choice," Cooper said angrily. "But there ain't nobody got a gun to my head." He regarded Shane. "If you're gonna do this, then I swear I'm walkin'. I don't care if I die here. I ain't gonna kill our own people. What the hell would that make me?"
"Unfortunately there's no section in the Marine Corps Officer's Manual that describes what to do if your orders are ethically unsound," Wang said. "But I'm with Hawkes. I won't do it."
"Look, we're not gonna let this Op beat us," Nathan said, returning to his seat. "Just calm down and think."
Shane began to shake her head. "I don't want this. God, I don't want this responsibility." She squinted at nothing in particular, then looked up at Wang. "Get the com balloon ready."
"You calling this in?" Cooper asked.
After a nod, she stood. "I wanna hear what Ross has to say. Maybe he already knows."
"No way," Cooper said emphatically. "No way he'd send us down here to kill POWs."
"We'll see," Shane said.
While everyone watched, Wang stuffed a tiny helium canister into the communications balloon and inflated it. The balloon was no bigger than a basketball and would carry aloft a com relay package no bigger than a canteen. The relay was unique in that it had the interesting habit of retransmitting incoming signals to random locations, one of which being the correct one. At a designated height, it would also release a dozen tiny transmitters that would in turn send signals to it, effectively creating so much communications traffic that the Chigs would hopefully not be able to trace the original signal (which was also encrypted) back to the ledge. The only weakness of the com balloon was that it, like the AP-Vs they had used to insert on planet, was a single-use, disposable device. And the fifty-eighth had only enough room to pack two.