Soldiers

by John Dalmas

  He stopped. Jerking the safety clip on his harness, he hit the release sharply, gathered chute and harness into a great wad of fabric and cords, then strode toward the headlights of the bus coming to pick them up. He felt big enough, powerful enough, to eat the world.

  ***

  The next day was Sevenday; for B Company, a pass Sevenday. They slept in till 0730 and there was no morning run. After breakfast, Speaker Spieler held a religious service for the trainees. An early lunch followed, then those who wanted to-Esau and Jael among them-rode trucks in to North Fork. Since week seven, when they'd become eligible for passes, they'd spent their free afternoons in a by-the-hour room at a small hotel. With so much night training, they hadn't been visiting the water heater room much.

  When they'd spent themselves, they dressed again and went outside to walk, holding hands. Old wives' summer lay on the land. The air was still, the sun soft with autumn haze, and Riverfront Park was carpeted with fallen leaves.

  "What was it like for you yesterday morning?" he asked. "Jumping and all."

  "Not too bad," she said, "until I started toward the door. Then I felt really scared."

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  "Not as scared as me, I'll bet. If you hadn't helped me, I couldn't have done it. My brain was froze, and my knees were like water. I wouldn't have been any scareder with a tiger chasing me." He paused. "But as soon as I was out the door-bang! No way can I tell you how great it felt! When I got down, I wanted to go up and do it again. Right away. And last night was just as good. Maybe better, because the sky was so beautiful."

  "It was, wasn't it." Jael paused. "About being scared that first time, scared of going out the door- Remember what Hosea Innis said that night, when we talked about warbots with Sergeant Hawkins?"

  "Remind me."

  "He said if he'd ever come across a tiger and didn't have so much as his ax, why even innocent as the Lamb of God, he'd be scared to death. Because while the soul goes to heaven, the body knows it's going to get killed and eaten." She looked up at her husband. "It was our bodies were scared. They did not want to jump out that door! And when they found out it was all right, the relief was so big, we felt really really good."

  Esau nodded thoughtfully, then stopped and kissed her. "You know what?" he said. "I'm married to the wisest woman in the world."

  She chuckled. "How about the prettiest?"

  "That too," he answered, and kissed her again. "You know something else I really really like?" he murmured. "Better than jumping out of a floater?"

  This time she laughed out loud. "Let's go back to the hotel," she said.

  Over the next two weeks, each of the paraglider platoons made three free-fall jumps with parasail chutes. The first was by daylight from 4,000 feet, wearing high-altitude jump suits. The trainees needed to get used to them, and even at only 4,000 feet, these autumn days were freezing, or close to it.

  Combat jumps would be at night, but the Masadans, demanding though they were, knew the value of training gradients. The trainees had been given a target to hit, a hundred-yard circle a mile from the flight path. Every jumper in 2nd Platoon came down inside the circle. And they all liked the parasails, which set them down less hard than the mass-jump chutes they'd used before. The second parasail jump was at night from 12,000 feet, their target a ring of unlit cloth panels eight miles away, invisible till they were near it. Until close in, they'd been guided by passive gravitic matrix detectors, read as a heads-up display on the faceplate of their jump helmet. They'd done it in virtual training, but needed to experience it for real.

  Two missed the target, and were taken back up immediately, to try again.

  Meanwhile, of course, they continued their infantry training, which was extended two weeks to accommodate the addition of paraglide and warbot training.

  On the following Oneday, 2nd Platoon made its graduation jump. By then, Camp Woldemars Stenders was no longer Camp Mudhole. Or Dusthole. Deep-freeze temperatures had arrived, hardening the ground like stone.

  It had already been decided to run this exercise in the subtropics. Their target would be an abandoned paddock, on an artillery range five hours by floater from Stenders. The operation was to be as realistic as feasible. There were even unwilling prisoners to be captured. Meanwhile, an enemy might very well have detected the floater, perhaps even recognized it as hostile, but would hardly connect it to the intended capture site. The floater would pass it twenty miles to the west.

  Forty miles short of the jump point, the carrier had slowed to 200 mph, hopefully still fast enough not to draw suspicion. The jump would be made at the same speed. And until they were on the ground, the only electronic gear the jumpers would activate was their heads-up displays.

  They had run and rerun this mission on sand tables, complete with imaginary enemy responses. But this was no sand table. Now they sat on bench seats 30,000 feet above the ground, in a nearly silent floater. Some stared at nothing, their attention inward. Some slumped, dozing. A buzzer sounded, loud and coarse, jerking them alert.

  "One minute to amber!" The voice was the pilot's.

  This time they had no Masadan jump master. Ensign Berg stood at one side of the exit, Sergeant Hawkins at the other. The floater arrived at the ready location. Above the door, the amber waiting light flashed on. The trainees got to their feet and did an equipment check. Static lines weren't used.

  The amber light flicked off, and the green ready light came on. The double doors spread, and the two files of trainees shuffled toward them.

  Exhilaration flowed through Esau Wesley; this was the life! Again the buzzer sounded, the red light flashed and the files moved, jumpers disappearing out the exit at a measured pace, one of Ensign Berg's, followed by one of Sergeant Hawkins'. Then Esau was at the lip, felt the ensign's hand slap his shoulder, and stepped out. The slipstream snatched him, then released him, and for a moment he seemed to hang suspended in the starry night. They'd been warned of the illusion. He maneuvered his arms and legs for a good opening position, then pulled his ripcord and felt the fabric feed out. There was no shock; he simply swung forward. Even the oscillation quickly damped and disappeared.

  He spoke the words "Activate HUD" to his helmet, and his heads-up display turned on, hair-thin lines lit against the backdrop of night. A red X showed near the top: the target. Near the bottom was a green arrow point, himself. The arrow pointed to the right, so he pulled lightly and evenly on his left control line until the arrow aimed at the X. Small numerals at bottom left read 29,612-his altitude, referenced to the landing site. Next to it was the wind vector, an unobtrusive arrow with a shaft, the windspeed indicated by the shaft length and small numerals. At his altitude, there wasn't much wind at the moment. Then he jettisoned his reserve chute and its weight.

  They'd been forbidden to activate their comm headsets till they were on the ground, in case the electronic signature was too strong. Again two key words activated his night vision. Peering around, he could see other parasails, higher, lower, ahead, behind… Deactivating the night vision, he settled down for the long, slow glide to the target. He could already sense the cold around him.

  Isaiah Vernon felt his usual pre-jump tension and post-jump exhilaration. Glancing up, he saw his black canopy against the stars, then unclipped his reserve chute and let it fall, just as he would on a combat jump. But he did it out of sequence; he hadn't checked his HUD. When he did check it, the position arrow was rotating, not pointing somewhere.

  Pulling on a control line-either control line-made no difference. Something was seriously wrong! His first impulse was to radio his predicament, but this exercise was to simulate reality. Besides, there was nothing anyone could do for him, and once he was down, he could call for help.

  Again he checked his canopy, this time with night vision. His problem was a lineover, presumably due to faulty packing. Two suspension lines had gotten across the canopy, and instead of one large airfoil, he had what amounted to three small airfoils. One was ej
ecting air sideways, producing the rotation. His HUD showed him falling much faster than he should.

  He responded quickly, climbing a riser hand over hand. When the connector link was in his reach, he pulled on its suspension lines. His thickly gloved hands were clumsy and the lines thin, but he was strong, and under the circumstances, driven. He continued climbing, partly collapsing his parasail, his rate of fall increasing markedly. Reaching the skirt of the parasail, he struggled to dislodge what seemed to him the lineover most susceptible to dislodging. What he succeeded in doing was collapsing the canopy entirely.

  He let go. A moment later the sail caught air and reopened, but still with the lineovers.

  I am going to die, he told himself, then shook the thought off and looked again at his HUD. His rate of descent was sixty-seven feet per second. At that rate, he thought, he'd end up mush when he hit. They'd bring him in in his helmet. Then he remembered a Masadan officer telling them the nearer they got to the ground, the thicker the air would be. That should slow him, but would it be enough? It seemed highly unlikely.

  His rate of fall slowed to 64 fps. Possibly, just possibly… On the elevation readout, the tens column was a blur. The hundreds were peeling off rapidly, and the thousands inexorably. He jettisoned his blaster, his rucksack, and everything else removable, slowing to 47 fps.

  Speaking to his helmet, he switched off all displays and deactivated his night vision. "Father in heaven," he said quietly, "into your hands I commend my spirit." Briefly he looked downward. A few miles to the north was a town, electric lights in its windows. There were people there-families, children-living their lives and worshiping the same God he worshiped. For a moment he felt love swell in him for those unknown Luneburgians. It seemed the most natural thing in the universe to do.

  Then he turned his attention to David's most beloved psalm. "… Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," he recited, "I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff-they comfort me. You prepare a table before me…"

  ***

  Jael Wesley was intent on her HUD. She'd timed her forward speed well; she'd make the paddock nicely before she hit. Hopefully without having to spiral in.

  Briefly she activated her night vision. Too far to see yet; she switched it off. The HUD gave horizontal distance to center target as 2.07 miles, and altitude 915 feet. At this level there was an eight-knot breeze, not enough to worry about, as long as she didn't have to buck it. The paddock was said to be about one acre. At one mile she slowed her forward speed, and at half a mile tried her night vision again. Now she could see the intended prisoners clearly, scattered but mostly near the fence. She'd hoped they'd be bunched up.

  Deactivating her HUD to avoid distraction, she adjusted her speed and direction by night vision. Her job was to land at the far side of the paddock and suppress fire from outlying "enemy guard positions." She swung wide, sizing up the guard positions while button-hooking to use up altitude and avoid the fence. Somewhere out there, A Company should already have arrived, and be lying in support, ready to attack the guards.

  But A Company made too much noise, and from the enemy outposts came blaster fire, directed not toward the paddock, but outward. In response, A Company's grenade launchers flashed, followed quickly by the pops of training grenades around the guard positions. No sooner had the grenades landed, then with blood-curdling shrieks, A Company's raiders rushed the enemy positions with fixed bayonets, blasters spewing soft pulses. Jael freed her rucksack and felt it jerk the dangle line.

  She was almost down, and braked. Her feet touched lightly, three running steps using up her momentum. She hit her harness release, released her blaster tie-down, and crouched by the fence, ready to provide supporting fire as needed.

  The capture teams were already in action. The intended prisoners consisted of twenty calves, each weighing about 250 pounds Terran. Unarmed though they were, the calves resisted, running madly to avoid would-be captors, and struggling when caught. One nearly trampled Jael. She fired a burst of soft pulses as it careened toward her, so that it fell skidding in its effort to turn. Someone grabbed it, threw it back down, and struggled to tie its hooves. After several minutes of running, wrestling, and whooping with laughter, the capture action ended with the landing of two floaters inside the paddock. Jerries dragged the "prisoners" to the ramps, then cut the ties and let them go. All that was left to do was muster, board the floaters and leave.

  The mission was over.

  It was at muster they learned that Isaiah Vernon was not with them, and no one had seen him since they'd jumped. Nor could anyone there pick up his transponder. Using one of the floaters' high-powered radios, Captain Mulvaney called Division.

  Yes, he was told, Isaiah Vernon's transponder had activated, giving his geogravitic coordinate. An ambulance floater from the artillery range had already picked him up, and he was being rushed to the division hospital.

  Why Division? Jael wondered. Didn't the artillery training camp have a hospital? Or perhaps his injuries weren't so bad. Somehow, though, it seemed to her they were.

  They learned the next day how severe Isaiah's injuries were, when Captain Mulvaney reviewed their graduation exercise with the entire company. Division's umpires had given B Company's paragliders a grade of "very good." Then he told them about Isaiah. "Apparently Trainee Vernon's parasail malfunctioned," he said gravely, "after he'd jettisoned his reserve chute. He hit the ground very hard; his knees and leg bones were shattered. He also had broken lumbar vertebrae and critical internal injuries. The medics kept him alive with life support equipment and an injection of Stasis 1. They assured me there was no chance at all that he'd have lived long in that devastated body."

  Mulvaney paused, and when he continued, used the trainee's given name. "Isaiah signed a warbot agreement last Sixmonth, so he's been bottled. When the sedative has worn off, he'll undergo therapy for neural trauma and be tested for neural functionality. But the conversion team doubts that he can function as a warbot."

  After the CO had finished, Speaker Spieler led the company in a prayer for Isaiah-not simply for his survival, but beseeching God that their brother could fight as a warbot.

  Afterward, more than thirty new agreements were signed by B Company trainees.

  Esau considered signing, and talked to Jael about it. "That's fine, if you want to," she answered. "But I've decided not to. I want to have babies if I possibly can, whether I'm crippled or not."

  Esau nodded. "Well then," he said firmly, "I won't either." And chuckled. "Because if you have babies, I want to be the father."

  Chapter 32

  The War at Home

  "Mr. Garmisch, Supervisor Reinholdt will see you now."

  Paul Garmisch got uneasily to his feet. He didn't know what this was about, but a guilty conscience had made him wary. The production supervisor's receptionist was indicating a door. It had opened, and a neatly-dressed, athletic-looking man waited by it. He was not Supervisor Reinholdt, but neither was he an office assistant. He looked too hard, too sure.

  "Come in, Mr. Garmisch," the man said.

  The words, the tone were mild, but to Paul Garmisch they sounded sinister. Garmisch was addicted to adventure cubes, and now he realized what this man reminded him of. He looked like the CIS men on shows about crime detection.

  Garmisch entered the office. It was not Production Supervisor Reinholdt who sat behind the desk. It was a woman, someone Garmisch had never seen before. Reinholdt stood to her left, somewhat removed. "Please sit down, Mr. Garmisch," the woman said, and beckoned toward a chair. To her right, also not close, was another man, seated in a chair with a monitor arm and key pad. A small, brown, wiry man with probing, deep-seeing eyes; inwardly Garmisch squirmed, trying to escape them. A foreign immigrant, he thought. Perhaps a Malay. He'd known a Malay family once. The parents had looked somewhat like this man.

  The woman repeated herself. "Please be seated, Mr. Garmisch. I am Ms. Sriharan."

  She did not ide
ntify her function. The omission troubled Garmisch, and so did the chair she'd indicated. He'd never seen one like it before. It stood apart, on a low, apparently portable platform. He stayed where he was. "What is this about?" he asked. His tone was neither challenging nor indignant. It was wary. Frightened.

  "I am about to tell you. But first, please sit down." She still sounded affable, looked affable. Her name was foreign, perhaps Asian he thought, but from her blond hair and blue eyes, she could be pure German. Garmisch did not consider himself hostile to non-Germans. "Let them live here, work here, vote here." He'd said it more than once. But he regretted genetic mixing, certainly with non-Nordics.

  It was, he knew, much too late to be prevented. Non-Nordics had been trickling in for centuries. Perhaps as far back as the Troubles. (In school, history hadn't taken with him.) After a few generations, little remained of their origins except foreign surnames, sometimes dark skin. African hair. He himself was of mixed origin; it was hardly avoidable. But in his case, so far as he knew, his non-German ancestors were Aryan: Moldavian, Polish, and Croat. In school he had even taken German as one of his electives, learning it well enough to carry on limited conversations.

  "Mr. Garmisch," she said. Her voice was still mild. "If you do not sit down, I must arrest you."

  Garmisch looked at her, then at "the CIS man," then the Malay. What is a Malay doing here? he wondered. And what is he thinking? Hesitantly he stepped to the chair and sat. Perhaps, he told himself, the questions would not be about what he feared. Perhaps he had no reason to worry.

  "Thank you, Mr. Garmisch. Let me complete the introductions." She gestured toward the supposed Malay. "This is Forensic Technologist Balaug, and the gentleman who admitted you is Senior Investigator VerDoorn. Both are of the Commonwealth Internal Security Directorate. You already know Supervisor Reinholdt, of course. He was kind enough to let us use his office."