Backshot

by David Sherman

Lavager was clean and looked far more refreshed and in control than he had on the trid. He stopped in the portico to smile and wave at the crowd across the street.

  “I don’t know about you folks,” he said in a loud enough voice to carry to the crowd, “but my stomach is telling me it’s time to eat; I’m taking my daughter and her friend out to dinner.”

  Al-Rashid’s grimace was visible all the way to where Gossner and Dwan stood. Dwan nudged Gossner. “Let’s go,” she said. They hurried to a parallel street and caught a taxi back to their hotel to get what they needed.

  Ramuncho’s Restaurant, New Granum

  Ramuncho greeted them effusively. “Your dining room is ready, sir.” He bowed politely.

  “You know my daughter, Candace, I’d like you to meet her friend, Gina Medina. No, Ramuncho, tonight I want the window table in the main dining room. I want everyone to see these fine young ladies who have agreed to dine with me this afternoon.” Diners in the main hall paused at their meals and stared at Lavager and his party. Several stood and applauded. Lavager bowed toward them. Candace almost shrieked when she saw the size of the window, but controlled herself and hissed,

  “Daddy, it’s safer in the back.” She tugged his arm as hard as she could. Ramuncho, who was also nervous about his head of state sitting in front of the windows onto Center Boulevard, reluctantly gestured at a table in a far corner of the room.

  “No, my usual table, in front of the windows! I want the citizens of the Union of Margelan to see me, to see me alive and enjoying a meal like anyone else. I want them to see there is no cause for fear! Dalmans for everyone, Ramuncho! Beer for me, whatever the boys here want for them,” he gestured at his security detail, “and wine for the ladies, your finest, say a Katzenwasser white, a bottle of that excellent Feinherb would do for their discriminating palates! Eat, drink, and be merry!” And with that he guided the two young women toward the table by the window. “Whatever Fate has in store for us, we’ll face it with full stomachs.” His joyous laughter filled the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A Cut, Twenty-Five Kilometers Northeast of the Cabbage Patch, Union of Margelan, Atlas

  A silence, disturbed only by a faint whimper, descended over the gap after the soldiers who tried to get out of the second and third armored cars were shot. Sergeant Daly watched and listened for a moment, then asked over the all-hands circuit, “Where’d that first car go?”

  “It crashed into the trees,” Sergeant Kare answered. “I haven’t seen any movement near where it disappeared.”

  “Take second squad and check it out,” Daly ordered. “Everybody else, keep alert; we don’t know who else might be around.” Or if they got a signal out , he mentally added. After a few seconds’

  consideration, he continued, “First squad, get a position with air cover and watch the road to the northeast. Eighth squad, do the same southeast. Sergeant Bajing, get the rest of the platoon ready to return to the lorry and mount up.”

  He got out his map and examined it. They still had thirty kilometers to go before heading cross-country to the AstroGhost. But if the convoy had gotten off a message, they didn’t have time to go thirty klicks before the search came down hard on this part of the road, they had to get away from it fast. He plotted a route that kept to covered waterways and the fringes of deep woods, where they might find concealment from searching aircraft.

  “Nomonon, turn on your lights so I can find you.” Nomonon did, and Daly started toward him. He’d only taken a few steps before the sound of gunfire erupted from the direction of the lorry.

  “Report!” he snapped into the all-hands circuit.

  “We caught a squad of locals trying to board the lorry,” Sergeant Kare panted as he reported—he sounded like he was running. “We took out half of them, and are in pursuit of the others.”

  “Let them go,” Daly ordered. “We don’t have time to run them down. Get your people back to the lorry.” He switched to the all-hands circuit and ordered, “Sergeant Bajing, get the platoon to the lorry, double-time, let’s get out of here now.”

  He reached Nomonon in a few more steps and handed him the map. “Study this along the way. I’ll guide you.” He took Nomonon’s arm to lead him to the lorry. They’d just started when a long burst from a fléchette assault gun, followed by the crack-sizzle of blaster fire made them stop.

  “Report!” Daly called on the all-hands circuit.

  “They circled back and tore up the lorry!” Kare reported.

  “Kill them!”

  “Already did, boss.”

  “Let’s go,” Daly snapped at Nomonon. “You can read the map later.”

  They ran.

  Daly found second and third squads forty meters east of the lorry. Sergeant Kare stood over eight dead soldiers. His men were arrayed in a defensive position facing deeper into the trees.

  “I believe that’s the last of the soldiers from the armored cars,” Kare said when Daly joined him. “Want us to search them?”

  “No,” Daly said; they were leaving so they didn’t have intelligence need for any documents the soldiers might be carrying. He shook his head. Why had they come back? The dumb fucks would still be alive if they’d kept going. But they hadn’t known who they were going up against, had they? That kind of ignorance, not knowing who one’s opponents were, had killed countless soldiers since the beginning of warfare. He turned to go back to the lorry, where he saw Nomonon opening the hood and removing his helmet and gloves to examine the vehicle’s engine.

  “Here, at least take this,” Kare said. He bent down and took a sidearm from one of the soldiers. Between that and the shiny tabs on his collars, he must have been an officer, even though he died with a fléchette rifle in his hands.

  Daly looked at the handgun. “No, you keep it. This was your kill, it’s your souvenir.”

  “Jak,” Kare said solomnly, “it’s an officer’s weapon. You’re our acting lieutenant, you should have an officer’s weapon.”

  Reluctantly, Daly accepted the handgun. “Thanks, Brigo.”

  “Can’t do it.” Daly could see the helmetless Nomonon shake his head as he looked under the hood at the ruined motor. “We can’t fix it even if we had replacement boards; the block is cracked and the motor mount is fractured.” He looked at Daly, who had his chameleon screen up so his face could be seen.

  “We’re on foot, boss.”

  Daly turned away so none of his Marines could see the dismayed expression on his face. They couldn’t get very far without transportation, and there was simply no way they could leave their wounded and dead. So what could he do? The Admiral Nelson had to send the AstroGhost to pick them up. Daly climbed a tree and locked his point-transmitter onto the Admiral Nelson . He got a reply to the message he’d sent before the armored cars reached the ambush. As he expected, the reply to his request for the AstroGhost to pick them up was a terse, “No.” He prepared a fresh message, telling the starship that the platoon no longer had transportation, then sent it. He settled down to wait for a reply, hoping no reinforcements or enemy aircraft were on their way. It took twenty minutes for the Admiral Nelson to get back to him with a response to his request.

  “Mudman,” the burst transmission said when he decoded it, “bad news. There’s too much traffic coming your way, and too many aircraft south and west of your position. We can’t risk exposing the Ghost to discovery. You’re on your own to rendezvous.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Don’t you understand we can’t travel fifty kilometers cross-country with our casualties?” But he said it to himself and didn’t record it for a burst transmission. The captain of the Admiral Nelson was right that he couldn’t expose the AstroGhost to discovery—Confederation involvement in the raid on the Cabbage Patch had to be kept secret. But that did nothing for the Marines stranded planetside. It wasn’t the first time, he knew, that the navy had abandoned Marines in a precarious position. But he couldn’t think of an instance where the Marines hadn’t
been able to salvage an untenable situation. Wait a minute! What did that message say? Daly read it again.

  “There’s too much traffic coming your way . . .”

  Did that mean on the road? What direction was it coming from? Daly turned up his helmet’s ears and heard the distant rumble of a lorry—to the east, not the west. He looked at the road, which was effectively blocked by the two armored cars that had crashed into each other. Thinking as he spoke, he issued orders to set an ambush and take the approaching lorry.

  * * *

  Ronson Gampan had been driving for thirty-three of his fifty-five years, most of that for Margelan Universal Trucking. He liked driving, and he liked his employer. He was twice married and twice divorced. All three of his children approved of Bountie Quadril, whom he intended to make the third Mrs. Gampan. One of the things Ronson liked about Bountie, and there were a great many things he liked about her, was she was young enough to make one or two more little Gampans with him. When he reached New Granum at the end of this run, he was scheduled for a week’s holiday. He planned to ask for Bountie’s hand during that week. Yes, life was good.

  But wait, what’s this? A wreck! Someone had an accident and the road was blocked. All thoughts of Bountie vanished from Gampan’s mind as he braked his lorry and jumped out of the cab to give aid to anybody injured. As soon as he determined the casualties, he’d radio in a call for assistance. His eyes widened as he ran toward the two vehicles and saw they were mili—

  Something hit him in the side—hard—and knocked him to the ground. Unseen hands grabbed his arms and jerked him back to his feet; they didn’t let go, but held him tightly and yanked his hands behind his back. Something went around his wrists and held his hands securely together. Then a voice in front of him said, “Sorry about that, pal, but we need your lorry.” But there was nobody standing where the voice came from! Gampan gaped, his breath came in shallow pants, he felt faint. The hands holding him hustled him to the side of the road and sat him against a tree trunk. Something went around his chest and under his arms, binding him to the tree.

  “Don’t worry,” another voice said, “somebody’ll be along shortly and set you free.”

  Gampan looked around manically for the source of the voice, but nobody was there!

  He heard his lorry’s engine grind and saw it buck as some unseen person tried to turn the wheels. Then he heard a raised voice curse, and another voice—was it the first voice he’d heard?—talking, followed by a soft curse.

  The footsteps of someone he couldn’t see approached him from the lorry, then a voice asked,

  “Anti-hijacking device?”

  “Y-Yes.” There wasn’t much hijacking in the Union of Margelan, but Margelan Universal Trucking thought any hijacking was too much, and Ronson Gampan agreed; all of MUT’s trucks could only be driven by their assigned drivers.

  “Can you unlock it?”

  “Nossir. The dispatcher is the only person who has the locking codes.”

  “Damn. All right, you’re going with us.” The voice turned to speak to someone else. “Untie him, he’s going to have to drive.”

  Unseen hands quickly stripped off the binding that held Gampan to the tree trunk and hauled him to his feet. They left his hands bound behind his back until they got him to the lorry and he was boosted into the cab.

  Someone was already in the cab. He didn’t see anyone but he did see the handgun that was pointed at him from midair.

  “You’re going to drive where I tell you to. Do you understand?”

  Gampan might not have understood invisible men, but he understood the handgun pointed at him.

  “Yessir,” he said.

  “Fine. When I tell you to, back up until you see a break in the trees on the left, then turn into it.”

  Gampan nodded rapidly.

  The voice told him to stop near a damaged lorry. Now he knew why they wanted his. He heard noises and felt the lorry shift on its springs as invisible men unloaded his cargo and loaded something into it he couldn’t see. He thought he heard the groans of men in pain.

  Metsa Forest, Three Hundred Kilometers East of New Granum

  Fifty kilometers with a driver he wasn’t sure he could rely on. Farther than that, actually—Daly hadn’t factored in the additional distance caused by their early departure from the road. He didn’t even want to think about how much farther they’d have to go sticking to whatever air cover they could find. But Ronson Gampan wanted to live, and he followed Daly’s instructions to the letter, even suggesting better lines to follow once he realized what the invisible man wanted. The trip was ninety kilometers all told, but Second Force Recon Platoon finally reached the AstroGhost’s hiding place without further incident. Gampan’s jaw dropped when the strange-looking shuttle levitated and slipped out from under its cover.

  Sergeant Bajing was the senior unwounded squad leader in second section, which made him the acting section commander, just as Sergeant Bingh filled that role in first section since Sergeant Daly had assumed command of the platoon. He approached Daly while Bingh and Kare saw to loading the wounded and dead on the AstroGhost.

  “You know what we have to do, don’t you?” he asked the acting platoon commander. Daly didn’t answer, he’d been grappling with that question for the past half hour. He was still holding the handgun Kare had given him, the one he had held on the civilian teamster during the cross-country drive. He couldn’t see Bajing’s face, but he knew where his senior sergeant had to be looking. Bajing sighed. “I’ll do it if you don’t want to.”

  Daly also sighed. “No,” he said. “I’m in command here. I won’t order anybody to do something I won’t do myself.”

  “You’re not ordering me, I’m volunteering.”

  “I can’t let you do it for me. If everybody else is mounted up, you get aboard the AstroGhost, too. I’ll join you in a couple of minutes.”

  “Okay, boss.” Bajing reached out to one of the UV lights in front of him and patted Daly on the shoulder, then turned to the shuttle. Daly stood where he was for a moment, then turned and walked to Ronson Gampan, who was again secured to a tree. He removed his helmet and went to one knee in front of the lorry driver.

  “Listen, man,” he said after searching the other’s eyes. “I’m really sorry about this, but if we just leave you, you’ll be able to tell who we are, and that will cause more trouble than anybody wants.”

  “But, but—I don’t know who you are! I can’t tell anybody anything!”

  Daly turned his head to look at the AstroGhost, then back at Gampan—the one thing anybody knew about that would identify them as off-worlders. “You can tell them more than you realize. I’m sorry, I really am.” Hardly anybody in Human Space other than Confederation troops, mostly Confederation Marines, wore chameleons. And the AstroGhost was so secret, almost nobody who wasn’t involved in its design, manufacture, or use, even knew it existed. The little bit Gampan could tell anybody would tell his interrogators that the raid was conducted by the Confederation, and there would be hell to pay. Invisible men: Some armies used chameleon field uniforms, but mostly chameleons were worn by Confederation Marines, and nobody was supposed to know the raid on the Cabbage Patch was conducted by Marines.

  A stealthed and highly maneuverable shuttle that didn’t look all that dissimilar to an Essay: Once word of that got out, potential opponents would begin trying to find ways of defeating it, which would unnecessarily cost Marine lives.

  Bottom line: When it comes to a choice between my life, or the lives of my people, and your life—you die.

  Nothing personal, that’s just the way the world works.

  “Mr. Gampan, please believe me when I say I’m really sorry I have to do this. But I really have to do it.”

  “Bu—” Gampan’s objection was cut off when Daly raised the handgun he still held and shot him in the heart.

  Ronson Gampan jerked against his bonds, then slumped and died.

  “I am so damn sorry I had to do that to you,”
Daly murmured. “Rest in peace.” He placed a hand on the driver’s shoulder for a moment, then stood and walked slowly to the AstroGhost. Nobody said anything about the blood and bone that speckled Daly’s shirt and face.

  Launch from Atlas

  The chief petty officer who coxswained the AstroGhost took off south, in the direction of the nation-state of South Solanum. Ground sensors detected the AstroGhost, but no aircraft could intercept it before it flew beyond the horizon and out of range. Once past the horizon from their launch point, the coxswain dropped altitude and flew at treetop level until he reached the equator, then turned on every masking device in the AstroGhost’s arsenal and shot east at a high angle. Fifteen minutes later, the shuttle was in the same orbit as the Admiral Nelson , which blocked view of it from the Kraken Interstellar Starport in front of her. An hour later, the AstroGhost docked, undetected by anybody in space or planetside, and the wounded Marines were being sped to the starship’s hospital, where surgical teams were standing by.

  Mission Objective One of Second Force Recon Platoon’s extraordinarily sensitive mission to Atlas was accomplished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  En Route to Ramuncho’s Restaurant, New Granum, Atlas

  They spent hardly any time in the hotel. Lance Corporal Dwan rechecked the contents of the oversize bag in which she was going to carry the maser and visited the water closet while Sergeant Gossner checked for new messages from the Admiral Nelson . There were no messages. When they left the hotel, they were dressed in the same festively muted garments they wore the second time they entered the vacant building. Gossner didn’t pay any attention to the bag Dwan carried slung over her shoulder; she’d frequently carried it since the shopping trip on which he’d been her pack animal. The bag was bigger than she needed to carry the disassembled maser in, but he took her word when she told him, “A lady needs to carry many things in her handbag”—though he thought calling that thing a “handbag” was stretching matters pretty far—“and the bigger the bag, the more things she’s expected to carry. So if I go out with my handbag mostly empty, people will notice and wonder. Do you want people wondering why I’m carrying an almost-empty handbag?”