by Steve Perry
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. If you got there on your own, you might buy it, but knowing it was artificially induced? Not your way. A lot of people would take the offer, but you aren’t one of them, are you?”
“So we believe because we want to believe?”
“Need, more than want, I think. It’s built into the operating soft- and hardware,” zhe said. “Some kind of survival characteristic, maybe, a sustaining comfort when great stress arises. Our bodies are full of chemical tides that ebb and flow to balance us physically and mentally. Why not one that does it spiritually? Such yearning seems to be common among most intelligent species, certainly humans. We need something beyond what we can see and touch and smell.”
He looked at hir, impressed that zhe had considered such things. He nodded again.
“Well. I will leave you to your snack and philosophy. I have augs to balance and programs to write. Good luck finding the answer.”
Zhe smiled, stood, then headed for the door.
He watched hir go, intrigued.
What a truly fascinating person . . .
– – – – – –
Dawn came to the only hill in the area and brought at least a little light. There was still fitful rain and mostly overcast, but breaks where the sun managed to peek through.
Jo took stock of the camp. There was a lot of standing water, plenty of debris, but mostly, the storm’s worst hadn’t been too bad.
Parts of the old houses had collapsed: window covers blown in, doors knocked open. Portions of the roofs had been torn off and hurled hundreds of meters away. The gardens were flattened, as were ornamental shrubs and small fruit trees. Cisterns were aslant or knocked over, and a couple of the outhouse structures toppled. That would have been a nasty surprise were you sitting on the outhouse bench when it tipped over.
If the squatters who lived here decided to return, they were going to have some work ahead of them to make the place habitable again.
A couple of the igloos had damage, but none of them had been peeled from their bases. None of the crawlers or transports took anything that would interfere with operation though one of the smaller APCs suffered a cracked side window from impact with something tossed into it at speed. Nobody had been seriously injured nor gravely wounded in the firefights.
Could have been a lot worse.
She checked the time. It was early, not yet 0600. Later today, there was going to be a major push, spearheaded by Colonel Buckley’s force, to take the primary wellheads. All going as planned, the Tejas forces would be in control of the objective by this afternoon or early evening, with sufficient backup to keep it for the remaining three days until the conflict’s termination. Holding the ground here to make sure nobody sneaked along the nearby road was part of the plan. As was breaking out and going down that road themselves to add their muscle to the plan.
Of course, no battle plan survived first contact with the enemy . . .
There was going to be a staff meeting of the various commanders in an hour, and a report on that would be forthcoming before the push. Shaping up to be a good day.
In theory.
Jo walked the area, avoiding the deeper puddles. The air was cleaner. Nothing like a hurricane to wash away air pollution, pollen, and anything else floating around. Her troops were up and slogging about, making the camp as functional as it could be with the mud as thick as it was.
Kay appeared and moved toward her. She didn’t seem to sink as deep into the mire as she should. Yeah, she was lighter, but even so.
“Jo Captain.”
“Kay. Everything seems to be secure?”
“Yes. The enemy’s dead and wounded are gone, no sign of activity on the hillside.”
“Aircraft will be cleared, we can expect to see drones pretty soon, theirs and ours.”
“Yes.”
Jo nodded.
– – – – – –
Zoree Wood looked at the staff gathered in the HQ. “All right, let’s share, shall we? Colonel Buckley, why don’t you lead off?”
Vim Buckley was a tall, gray-haired man of fifty-five, who had been kicked out of the Blue Hats as a lieutenant for decking a superior officer. He’d gotten the rank the hard way, via field commission. His scalp was depilated and he had the Ghost Lancer sigil tattooed on his head. He was harder than a leather sack full of rocks, and as good a soldier as Cutter had ever known. If he told you something, you could take it to the bank.
Buckley said, “Op Theater North is dogged down tight. The rain and wind caused some problems, but we got those fixed. We control much of the main access road to the wells, and our troops are set for a surge when we get the word, and we won’t be taking the easy road. Once we start, anybody who wakes up and tries to follow us will be stopping to pick a whole lot of nasty splinters out of their feet.”
Wood nodded. “Shields?”
Del Shields had commanded the company that stood firm against five times its number during the Battle for Port Barton Samuels, on Veldt. Severely injured in that fighting, he retired a captain, and once he recovered, went into corporate military. He walked with an old-style power brace on one leg, didn’t want the implants. Shields was a man who, like Buckley, if he said he’d do something, would—or die trying.
His comment was short and sweet: “Nobody is getting past our units on the Southwestern quadrant. They don’t have enough troops on their side, even if the rest of you all go home.”
That drew smiles all around.
“Rags?”
Cutter said, “My people control the high ground overlooking the two roads from the east into the wellheads. We have additional forces ranging the forests and making sure nobody sneaks up that way. Once Vim’s troops push, we’ll cover his southern flank.”
Cutter leaned back and listened to the other commanders offer their comments. On paper, they had this in the bag. They had outmaneuvered the opposition strategically and tactically, and while you could never be sure until the cease-fire command, it certainly looked as if it was theirs to lose. Wood was a better general, she had picked better people, and they had done a better job of hitting their marks, before and after the shooting began. With only just over three days left until the war was over, it would take more than the other side seemed capable of doing to win.
Everybody here knew it, too; it resonated in their voices. They were all old pros, they knew which way the sun shone and the wind blew, and, for now, at least, those were at their backs, blinding and spraying grit into the faces of their enemy.
After everybody was done, Zoree said, “All right. We got this, all we have to do is keep executing as we have been doing. Don’t start thinking about how you are going to spend your bonus, we don’t want to jinx it, but as long as nobody screws up, we all know how this is going to end, right?”
That got a chorus of assents and grins.
– – – – – –
“How’d the meeting go?”
Cutter ambled into the office and looked at Gramps. “Fine. Nobody seems to be in any trouble, and all continuing as it is, when the whistle blows, we are platinum to the core.”
“That’s what I want to hear.”
“Anything new I need to know?”
“Well. I talked to my contact in commercial MI, and while uplevels despise Junior, nobody has a tight enough rein on him to keep him from fucking us over if he really wants to.”
“He send the shooter?”
“Nobody I talked to can say.”
“Anything on the Bax?”
“Not yet.”
“How’s the hip?”
Gramps looked at him. “What hip?”
“The one that got shot while you were dicking around with the FCV next to the fucking Faraday forest.”
“Oh. That. You scanned the log vids.”
“My job to know what is
going on in my command.”
“It’s fine. Just grazed me.”
“You didn’t feel like it merited a mention in your report?”
“Hey, I cut myself shaving last week, too. You want to know every piddly detail of my day?”
“I do indeed. You need more fiber in your diet.” He paused. “Now you know how it feels, you always peeping over everybody’s shoulder.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I doubt that.”
Gramps smiled.
– – – – – –
The explosion was close, loud, and the impact knocked Jo from her feet and into the air. She flew, fell, hit, managed a kind of roll, and came up into a crouch, a red haze surrounding her.
Grenade? Mortar?
Hand of God?
A quick check didn’t show anything bleeding, no broken bones.
Jo scrabbled for cover and tried to call on the opchan for a sitrep from the others.
She didn’t even get a carrier wave on the com. Her communication aug was off-line.
Well, shit!
She was woozy; the concussion and fall had rattled her. She also noticed that she couldn’t hear much, nor could she see much. What—?
“Captain?”
Singh crouched next to her.
“I’m fine, but my com is out. Anybody hurt?”
Singh listened to his own com. “Not seriously, sah, but the enemy is making a serious run at us, and they seemed to have somehow gotten reinforcements and more vehicles.”
“That doesn’t seem likely.”
“Still.”
“Jo Captain?”
Jo looked up to see Kay. She had not heard nor smelled her arrival.
This was bad, that she hadn’t sensed Kay. Her systems were down.
“We are outnumbered and outgunned,” Kay said. “It would appear to be retreat or die. Which?”
She asked the question as if the answer didn’t matter to her, and probably on a deep level, it didn’t. Go. Stay. Live. Die. Whichever . . .
Jo shook her head, as if that would somehow clear away the fog. “Retreat. We were going to pull back anyhow. We have determined their weakest spots; if those haven’t changed, we’ll cut through one of them. Listen, my com is out and my augmentation system is damaged. Call Singh when you find out which way we need to go.”
“I will.”
She seemed to vanish.
Jo tried to reboot her augs, but that apparently wasn’t working, either. Everything was off-line.
Fuck!
“Singh, stay with me. Put out a call, tell everybody to get ready to run, as soon as Kay finds the best route. A-1 evacuation protocols. Somebody find me an earpiece.”
“Sah.”
They had planned to break away to cover Colonel Buckley’s advance in less than an hour; they were going to have to advance the timing on that if they were going to be of any use to him.
Or alive . . .
“Call HQ and tell them the situation,” she told Singh.
“Sah.”
Anything that wasn’t packed and ready to go would be mined and left behind, and the fastest vehicles would lead the retreat. They had four potential routes mapped out for when they needed them, and with any luck, Kay would be calling with their pick real soon now . . .
“Sah, Kay has a route.”
“Tell everybody. Where is my communicator?!”
Somebody appeared and handed the small unit to her. She slipped it into her ear and clicked it green. To Singh, she said, “Let’s go.”
The opchan chatter told her she was connected. Good.
She followed Singh, and when she moved, she was dizzy and nauseated. Her body seemed as if it were wrapped in a lead blanket; her senses were dull, she felt almost blind, deaf, her sense of smell dead, her sense of touch gone.
The lead crawler, its guns working, rolled down the hill, flanked by a pair of light APCs, also blasting away. Those who weren’t inside a vehicle jogged alongside, firing their carbines at whatever they thought worth shooting.
“Command cart coming up behind us, sah. Get ready.”
The cart slewed to a stop, throwing mud up in a ragged sheet. Jo and Singh hurried to get inside. Gunny was driving.
Once they were in, the cart resumed a controlled skid down the drenched hill.
“You okay?” Gunny asked.
“Okay enough.”
The cart’s longcom lit. “Jo?”
Formentara! Just knowing that made Jo feel better.
“I’m here.”
“What happened?”
“Grenade, mortar, something close. I got knocked sprawling. My systems aren’t running, and I can’t seem to reboot anything. I’m mostly blind, deaf, smell is out, touch, proprioception, I’m physically weak.”
“That shouldn’t have happened,” zhe said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know what to tell you about that.”
“Hang in there. I’ll be back.”
Jo squinted through the windshield. She could see troops moving, the vehicles, but they were fuzzy and dim images; the details she was used to were absent. It was like a hazy, dark filter over her vision.
On com, she heard:
“—clear on the left—!”
“—spike that fucker with the G2G, right there—!”
“—caboose—?”
“—they have the hill, but they are not pursuing, I say not pursuing! Still raining shit down though—!”
Jo said, “We have any Z-drones left?”
“We have four, Cap,” somebody said.
“Can they fly?”
“Already deployed, Cap.”
Muzzy, definitely. Might need the medic to check her out—
The command cart reached the flats. There were a few enemy troops still shooting there—a bullet spanged! from the cart’s side armor—but they were falling back.
The mud was no less thick, but the cart’s studded tires bit into more solid ground, and the vehicle gained speed.
“Everybody catch a ride, stat,” Jo said. “CFI has left the building. Go, Gunny. Burn the tires up.”
– – – – – –
“Jo?”
“Colonel.”
“How are you doing?”
“We’re fine. Got a few wounded, one KIA. Now on the road to cover Vim’s push. The enemy will just think we are running, I don’t see they’ll figure it out we were leaving in a little while anyhow. Don’t appear to be chasing us.”
“No, how are you doing?”
“Can’t see, hear, smell, feel, or taste worth a crap, and I’m like a baby kitten for strength; other than that and the dizziness and nausea, fine.”
“Formentara . . . ?”
“Zhe’s working on it, but nothing yet.”
“Have your medic run some scans.”
“Yeah.”
– – – – – –
And here was the funny part, Jo realized after the field medic checked her. All of her senses and reflexes and general physical fitness were straight down the middle—completely normal—
—for an unaugmented human being.
It had been so long since she had started running augs—she’d gotten her first at sixteen, using money she’d saved working the opal mines. It had been one of the old CAS systems—Citius, Altius, Fortius: Faster, Higher, Stronger . . .
Not top-of-the-line, even then, just real basics, hormones, spliced virals, and connective-tissue strengtheners, but sufficient to allow her to do what she had to do to put the events during that terrible field trip to Adelaide to rest.
It wasn’t until much later she realized she’d been lucky the drunken medic who had done the job hadn’t killed or crippled her.
Lot of water under a
lot of contested bridges since then, and many more augs. That she wasn’t halfway to an early grave because the augs were perfectly balanced was entirely due to Formentara’s genius.
This was the default sensor system, and Jo marveled at how puny it was. Unaugmented people didn’t realize how . . . little they had.
She sure hoped Formentara could pull another miracle out of hir magical bag of spells . . .
“Jo.”
Speak of the devil.
“Here.”
“I’ve run the computer simulations. It took a while to get the conditions right; it shouldn’t have happened, but there is a precise distance and pressure wave that will do what it did. One chance in a million. I should have picked that up before. It looks as if your hypothalamic regulator has been kicked off-line from compression shock.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Of course I can fix it! But I need you on my table, I can’t have some ham-handed FM dicking around in there, even with me looking over his shoulder. This is delicate stuff. I can rebuild the V&H so it won’t happen again, but I have to have hands on.”
“I’m kinda busy now.”
“I understand. I’ve read your physical-exam stats, you aren’t in any danger, you can walk around without any big risks, but the way I have your systems balanced, I need half an hour to do the repair and rebuild.”
“I’ll have my secretary make an appointment for after the war,” Jo said.
“Listen, I’ve put a lot of work into making you the finest soldier in this half of the galaxy; don’t you get yourself killed before I can put you back into shape.”
“I’ll try to avoid that.”
“See that you do.”
Zhe disconnected without another word.
Jo started to shake her head, but that made her want to puke, so she stopped that.
– – – – – –
They pulled over for a quick break ten klicks from the hill, a pee break, to stretch.
Kay ambled over to where Jo stood, squinting into the bright sunshine. Hard to believe there had been a hurricane blowing only a short time ago.
Never knew how good your polarizing opticals were until they weren’t working.
“Be a good time for a match,” Kay said. Her voice and expression were absolutely deadpan.