CHOP Line

by Henry V. O'Neil

  “What if Asterlit had caught you? What if it was you making that confession?” She sat back down. “No one’s going to believe the coerced testimony of a hired killer like the Misty Man. But the chief of security for the Chairwoman? You almost finished me right there, Hugh.”

  “I needed to see it for myself.” Leeger stared at the carpet. “It’s awful. The camps, the squalor, the hopelessness, the brutality. It’s every lousy thing humans can do to each other, all in one place.”

  “That’s why we have to end it as soon as possible. By restoring order.”

  “Restoring order is only going to end it for one side, ma’am.”

  “We do what we can.” Reena’s voice was wooden. “That’s something Olech understood. It’s impossible to do any more than that. And we’re kidding ourselves when we try.”

  Though physically a passenger on the Delphi, Mira Teel was somewhere else entirely. Her body was asleep in her Transit Tube, but her mind was awake in a setting it easily recognized. Colors slowly swirled in her vision like clouds, and warmth surrounded her. Others dreamt of people and events in the Step, but the communications Mira Teel received were always impressions.

  Just then the gently shifting panoply was a mix of light green, dull yellow, and rose. Soothing, comforting colors. So often this meant an important message, as if telling her to be open and aware. Messages came in many forms, from simple objects that appeared on the clouds to nothing more than a hint of an emotion. Although the former method was more straightforward, she’d come to believe the latter held greater significance.

  Weightless and formless, she floated in the colors. As always, she felt the presence of intelligence, intent, and interest. Something was there with her in the variegated void, and it ardently wished to communicate. Sadly—and many times Mira believed she detected true sadness—it didn’t know how, or she was simply not smart enough to understand.

  But here, now, a throb of expectation pulsed in the mist. She focused her attention, studying the swirls and eddies as a paltry means of indicating that she was ready. The response was immediate, and she recognized the first of the objects to float into view. It was one of the stones from previous dreams, polished and sparkling and smoothly rotating. She’d found the riddle of the ornaments impossible to solve, but tried not to think of the frustrated hours she’d spent trying to unlock their meaning.

  A second one appeared, and then a third, and her own excitement matched the vibration around her. In all of the other dreams, only one of the unexplained baubles had appeared at a time. Her eyeless, undirected vision drank in the sight as the last of the five skidded into line with the others. The rocks stopped revolving, as if calling for her attention.

  The flowing colors behind the ornaments brightened in one spot, and then that grew until it was a ball of light. The sphere slid into the center of the row, and then the stones began to circle it. Some came close to touching it while others seemed almost to sail away before coming back into view. At times the ball of light effervesced bright, tiny bubbles that quickly vanished, while the rocks kept up their prearranged dance.

  Mira’s consciousness tried to scream her comprehension. The light was a star, and the rocks were planets orbiting it. It was no formation she recognized, and might not exist at all, but that was clearly the intent.

  A wave of warmth lapped over her, and she awoke.

  Chapter 15

  The hill seemed to get bigger as Ayliss climbed. Tall, thin trees stuck up out of the hardened soil, their tufted tops swaying in a breeze she couldn’t feel. The rest of the trainee squad was spread out to her left and right, also struggling up the incline, also loaded down. She sweated freely inside the badly fitting training armor, the overladen rucksack pushing down on her shoulders. If she arched her back at all, the shift in weight threatened to pull her over backward, but if she bent over too far, it tried to drive her face into the hillside.

  The mock Scorpion rifle was constantly in the way, and she kept switching it from one hand to the other in order to grab the nearest tree. As for the bizarre saplings, they swung back and forth as soon as they were touched, offering no support except for a brief handhold. At one point in the ascent she’d leaned back against one of them, only to have it slip away and almost send her crashing back to the bottom.

  Ayliss looked up, telling herself not to, but needing to see where the rising ground met the blue skyline. There it was again, not twenty yards ahead, but she tried to remember seeing that mirage twice before in the last thirty minutes. The training cadre had called this phenomenon a false crest, warning that it only appeared to be the summit. They would reach what they believed to be the highest point in the ascent, only to find that the ground continued to rise just beyond a short patch of level soil. Ever helpful, the NCOs had included this punishing escarpment in the march route to demonstrate the effect. Ayliss’s thighs trembled with the effort of keeping her upright, and so she raised a boot and forced it upward.

  She heard a low moan to her left, and already knew it was Legacy. They’d been walking for three hours, over varying terrain, and the short woman had struggled right from the start. That had been surprising, based on her performance on other rucksack excursions, and Ayliss had silently wondered if her squad mate was sick. Looking over, she saw that the gutty civilian’s face and fatigues were completely soaked in sweat. She was about to say something encouraging when Bontenough called out.

  “It’s the top!” she rasped, just loud enough to be heard by the other four. Although she found Bontenough’s constant advice annoying, Ayliss had been forced to admit the former corporal was right more often than not. Even more surprising, she was the only trainee whom the cadre had not yet given a nickname.

  Immensely relieved, Ayliss sidestepped across the slope to get behind Legacy. Litely had the same idea on the other side, and together they shouldered the short woman and her ruck the last twenty yards. The top of the ridge was a flat expanse lined with more of the wispy trees, and all five of them collapsed in a circle.

  “I’m sorry.” Legacy spoke between huge breaths. “I just don’t have it today. Feels like I’m carrying two of these things.”

  “It’s all right.” Bontenough was standing now, her load on the ground and a canteen in her hand. She poured some of the water down the back of Amery’s neck. “But we’re going to have to pick up speed on the downhill. We’re behind on the time.”

  “What did I tell you?” Plodder blurted out, sitting with her back against her ruck and her Scorpion across her lap. “She’s too short for the load we’re carrying. If she’d done a hitch, maybe she’d have learned how to do this.”

  “Oh, enough of that I’ve-been-fighting-the-war-and-you-haven’t bullshit!” Ayliss yelled. “You telling me you did a lot of ruck-humping in the military police?”

  “More than you did, Minister,” Plodder snarled, sliding her arms free and starting to rise. “And while we’re at it, how about you stop acting like some kind of hero just because Sam took a few shots at you?”

  Bontenough and Litely were already stepping between them, wearing the same expression of exhausted annoyance, when the anger on Elliott’s face drained away. Ayliss’s tired mind found this confusing for a moment, but then cleared. She exhaled loudly in embarrassment.

  “So how many push-ups is that?” Elliott asked, looking away.

  “You spouted off, she spouted off, then you came back again. Three stupids at ten push-ups apiece,” Bontenough recited, and then spit on the dirt. “Let’s do ’em.”

  It was an agreement they’d reached the night Yerton was dismissed. To end the infighting, the entire squad had agreed that they would all do ten push-ups for every barb passed in anger, regardless of who said it. Silently, regretfully, they all lay flat in a circle, facing each other. Their damp bodies bobbed up and down for thirty repetitions of the exercise, and then collapsed.

  Bontenough moved over to Legacy’s pack, and began unfastening the long straps that held its unwieldy
load in place. Every one of the trainees carried the same assortment of oddly shaped weights, fiendishly designed to make it almost impossible to fit them inside the backpack so that they didn’t shift around.

  “Don’t do that,” Legacy protested. “You’re not carrying my weight for me.”

  “Like you said, you haven’t got it today. Tomorrow it could be one of us.”

  “In a pig’s ass,” Litely answered, but the accompanying laugh took the sting out of it. The cadre had finally nicknamed Litely “Lightfoot” because they’d decided she wasn’t contributing up to her full potential. They’d accused her of holding out on the squad, but she’d replied that she was merely conserving energy. Ayliss believed Litely had been telling the truth, having observed her during their many training runs. Lightfoot had a strange, arm-hanging gait that was nonetheless graceful and effortless. Whereas the shorter Bontenough and Legacy bounced along with choppy, pounding steps and Plodder’s long legs covered the ground with great strides, Litely looked like she could literally run all day.

  Bontenough opened the rucksack flap, and selected one of the weights. This one was long and rectangular, with a handle cut into one end. Orange like the others, its poundage was stamped into its side. Ayliss watched Lightfoot and Plodder both grimace because Bontenough had selected the heaviest of the weights, the twenty pounder, and then realized she was frowning herself. One of them was going to have to add that to her load. Still, Ayliss managed to look directly at Bontenough instead of reflexively looking away.

  “What is going on with this?” the short woman asked the air, raising the orange plate with difficulty. It was clearly marked with a two and a zero. “This thing is a lot more than twenty pounds.”

  Ayliss rose, taking the object with one hand. After so many marches, they were all familiar with the heft of the different items. It pulled her arm toward the dirt.

  “You’re right. What the fuck?”

  Plodder and Lightfoot each gave it a try, and a marginally rejuvenated Legacy did the same. Expressions of mystification quickly changed to anger.

  “Those fuckers. They changed out my twenty with this anvil.”

  “When did they do that? We moved out right after weigh-in.”

  “Naw, that’s wrong. They got mad at Plodder for rucking up early.”

  “I can’t believe this. They must have switched it out while we were in the thinking position.” Lightfoot slapped Legacy on the shoulder. “The trainers sure must like you.”

  They exchanged a few more profanity-laced comments before noticing that Bontenough was undoing the straps on her pack. They watched as she began removing the familiar rectangle, three squares, two spheres, and a single orange pyramid from the bag.

  “What are you waiting for? We have to figure out if they pulled this same trick on anybody else, and then we have to reconfigure the load across the squad.”

  Each of them started to imitate Bontenough, and Ayliss spoke without thinking. “This sucks. Here I thought I was getting the hang of this.”

  “Huh?” Legacy grunted with raised eyebrows. “You knew your pack was light?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.” Remorse changed to resentment. “And who says my load’s light?”

  “Let’s not add any more stupids to the bill today, huh?” Plodder asked. As a codicil to their agreement, they’d decided that the punishment push-ups could be avoided if a warning stopped an argument before it got going. Ayliss and Legacy broke eye contact, and returned to the rucksacks.

  Bontenough quickly devised a method for comparing the like-sized weights. The extra poundage added to Legacy’s load had been subtracted equally across the other four rucksacks.

  “They really put some thought into this. Nobody noticed, because the change was so small,” Litely observed. “And they kept the squad’s load exactly where it’s supposed to be.”

  “We have five more miles.” Bontenough took the heaviest weight and slid it into her ruck. “Everybody except Legacy carries the extra for one mile. Put it at the top, so we can change it out quickly.”

  “Who carries it for the last mile?” Plodder asked.

  “I will,” Bontenough answered. “Strict rotation. It comes back to me at the end.”

  “No.” Legacy spoke, already tightening her rucksack straps. “I’ll be all right by then. Strict rotation, like you said.”

  “You already carried it for five miles.”

  “Yeah.” Legacy gave a huge grin. “Let’s play with their heads for once. See if we can make them think I didn’t notice.”

  “So what did we learn during our little walk in the woods?” Sergeant Stempful addressed the trainees in the middle of a clearing. Several Force vehicles were parked around its edges, including an ambulance, with several enlisted men and women gathered near them. The training squad stood in a row, the sweat-soaked rucks and dummy weapons on the ground before them.

  “Not to trust the training cadre, Sergeant!” Bontenough popped off. One of the squad’s minor rebellions was to respond to questions as if they were new enlistees instead of Banshee candidates; the cadre had already indicated they disliked this.

  “Good answer, but wrong.” As always, Stempful spoke at a conversational level. “Here’s why. First you trust your squad. Then you trust your platoon. After that, you trust your company. Outside of that, you trust no one who isn’t actually going with you. So the notion of trusting your trainers is just plain silly.”

  Standing at attention, Ayliss kept her face rigid while pondering Stempful’s advice. It was the first time the NCO had voiced any kind of opinion that wasn’t in lockstep with Command.

  “Private Legacy, what did you learn today?”

  “I learned to speak up, Sergeant!”

  “Excellent. You see what you did wrong.” Stempful appeared impressed. “The team is only as strong as its weakest member. You are not individuals, dealing with your own injuries and issues. I know it’s easy to get that idea, humping a heavy load over rough terrain, but that, too, is wrong.

  “Banshees get injured. Banshees get wounded. And sometimes, believe it or not, your body simply doesn’t have what it takes on a given day. When that happens, the team has to adjust. By keeping silent, Private Legacy slowed you down and almost injured herself. Out in the war, that could have doomed your mission. But Private Bontenough realized something was wrong, and the rest of you took action once you identified what it was. That was the object of this exercise, and even though you took too long recognizing the problem, you did fix it.”

  Ayliss tried to peer out of the sides of her eyes to see the others, and thought she detected the twitch of a smile in the corner of Elliott’s mouth. Stempful called out to the enlisted people near the vehicles.

  “Break out the chow!” The support personnel sprang into action. Some of them started setting up a pair of long tables, while others began to unload the insulated boxes that brought hot food to the field.

  “Believe it or not, you passed a major test today. You are still a long way from being Banshees. But you’re getting there.” Stempful glanced at the workers across the clearing, and lowered her voice. “Today you learned something vital. Take care of each other, ladies. Out there—” her prosthetic eye seemed to shine when she briefly looked up at the sky “—we are all we have.”

  “Rig. You’re up.” Litely’s hand was on her shoulder. Ayliss blinked hard, her cheek against her grounded rucksack, surprised she’d been allowed to fall asleep. The trainees had enjoyed their meal, and then cleaned their gear while each one in turn had been called to the ambulance. Although medics had accompanied them during most of their training, Stempful had announced that, from now on, they would be receiving regular checkups with the support unit’s PA.

  The sun was warm, and the tufted trees surrounding the clearing had stopped moving. Ayliss found it delightful to walk without the load on her shoulders or the armor wrapped around her torso. The troops who had brought out the food were quietly chatting near the v
ehicles, waiting to be sent back, and Ayliss noted with a quiet joy that she didn’t yearn to accompany them. A female medic stood by the ambulance’s open back doors, and Ayliss spread her arms while she scanned her vital signs.

  “Okay, go inside.”

  She went up the folding steps into the narrow bay, stopping short when she recognized the gray-haired PA. What had his name been? She’d heard it not long ago, but now it seemed to be on the other side of a vast chasm of time.

  “Have a seat, Ayliss.” Scalpo had traded his lab clothing for camouflage fatigues. He was studying a handheld, probably analyzing the results of the preliminary scan. “Seems you’re none the worse for wear. You’ve dropped a few pounds, just like the others.”

  She looked around the compartment. So many questions she wanted to ask, about Blocker and Tin and Ewing, but the cadre’s constant scrutiny and trickery made her hesitate. Scalpo looked up.

  “Wondering why I’m here, right? Last time you saw me was on Larkin.” He waited, but she didn’t respond. “You can speak freely with me, Ayliss. About anything. I can’t take care of your health any other way.”

  “What happened? Why are you here?”

  “The Guests didn’t care for the assistance I gave you. They paid me a visit, but that didn’t go quite the way they planned.” He reached for a stethoscope. “Take off your fatigue top.”

  Ayliss obeyed, stripping to her T-shirt while Scalpo continued. “Then some thoughtful individual took the bomb meant for Rittle and put it inside a ZQ cargo hold strong enough to contain the blast when it went off. It destroyed several hundred units of expensive equipment the Guests were about to ship out at an obscene profit. I’d already left by then, and when I caught up with Dom, he had everything arranged with Assignments.”