by Steve Perry
Kay was making a joke. Still amazed Jo every time she did that.
Jo smiled. “Right. If you tie one hand behind your back and hobble your legs, I might have a prayer.”
“Probably not,” Kay said. “If you are indeed constrained to your fighting knowledge and normal human speed and strength? I would be hard-pressed to calculate your chances. Something below . . . 3 percent, perhaps. I might trip, or have a stroke, or be hit by a meteorite.”
Jo laughed. It made her head hurt, but it released some tension. “Thanks. I needed to hear how pitiful I am without my bells and whistles.”
“No worse than any other human. No healthy Vastalimi has ever been beaten in hand-to-claw combat by an unaugmented human.”
“I heard about a martial arts master named Evets—”
“A human myth, it did not happen.”
“You would say that.”
Kay ignored her. “And even one with increased strength and speed and other . . . bells and whistles can only manage it rarely. At least until you changed the statistics.”
“Formentara says zhe can fix it, put me back to where I was before.”
“That will be good. I would hate to lose a training partner who keeps me on my toes.”
“Yeah, I’d hate that, too. How does it look out there?”
“The drone they had following us was shot down by our rearguard drones though it took one of them out before that happened. They seem disinclined to pursue.”
“Because they don’t know where we are going.”
“They wanted the hill. They have the hill. They should have no idea of our further intent. They believe they have won. They are shortsighted. This often seems to be a part of the human condition.”
Jo said, “If our plan works, and it is showing every indication that it will, we have this in the can. A few more days, the horn sounds, we win.”
“I am compelled to point out that there are many steps between seeking prey and eating it,” Kay said.
“Yeah. I hear that.”
EIGHTEEN
“Say again?”
“I’m sending Brooks out to take over your unit. You need Formentara’s tender ministrations, and I’ve got another assignment for you.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“When you get here, Jo.”
Jo’s CFI unit had arrived at the crossroads where they would harass anybody who suddenly realized that Colonel Buckley had stolen a march on them and was on his way to occupy the primary wellheads, getting there from a direction nobody would have reasonably expected.
In a standoff, sometimes the person who moved first got enough of a jump so they couldn’t be caught. Good tacticians were like magicians. While you were busy watching one hand, they’d slap you with the other.
“I’m fine out here, Rags, I—”
He had expected her to want to stay on-station, despite her injuries. “This is not make-work, I have something you are better qualified to do than run things where you are. Brooks is capable of holding things together there. You hired her, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“Nancy will be there in approximately thirty minutes. Pack your gear.”
“Stet that,” she said.
Two minutes after they broke the connection, Formentara stepped into his office unannounced. “Well?”
“She’ll be here in forty-five minutes,” he said.
“Good.”
Formentara turned around and left without another word.
Cutter grinned. Genius had a few quirks; part of the price you paid to have it around. One thing it never was? Boring . . .
– – – – – –
Jo’s desire was to take a long, hot shower when she got back to the base. The crawlers had outdoor showerheads, but the noodle-pinching hardware designers had been given keep-it-cheap design orders, and had apparently achieved them. Crawler showers came with absolutely unalterable timers that gave you a maximum two minutes of piss-poor pressure before they shut off; then they made you wait two more minutes before they would restart. Standing there wet and soapy waiting for more slow-flow rinse water was not the most soothing experience when you were scrubbing mud and blood off yourself.
More than a few soldiers over the years must have entertained the fantasy of hunting down the people who came up with shower timers and murdering them. Or at least dipping them in a latrine trench, then restricting them to a crawler shower to wash it off . . .
There was a common workaround in the field—fill a thirty-five-liter bucket with water from an unregulated fire-hose tap and, using a spare showerhead, some tubing, and a drop-in induction heater, rig your own to get five or six minutes of uninterrupted hot water.
Usually for a short stay, there was other stuff to keep you too busy to play with rigging a shower, so mostly, you just suffered under anemic and short cycles. Enough to get somewhat clean but not at all satisfying . . .
Twenty minutes under a needle shower at the base was ever so much more refreshing.
Alas, it was not to be; Formentara was waiting when Nancy taxied the hopper to the debarkation ramp.
“Come on,” zhe said. Zhe turned and walked away without looking back to see if Jo was following hir.
“Maybe I’ll save you some hot water,” Gunny said. “But . . . probably not.” She grinned.
“I hope you slip, fall, crack your head, and drown.”
Gunny laughed.
In Formentara’s suite, zhe said, “Clothes off, on the table.” Zhe was already waving hir hands back and forth over the reader.
“Somebody pee in your oatmeal?”
Formentara frowned. “What?”
“You seem somewhat testy.”
Zhe blinked, looked at Jo, but kept loading gestures into the reader. “I put a lot of time and energy into crafting your system. You are unique. I can’t have you getting blown up! All my work down the fucking drain? I expect you to take better care of yourself!”
In that moment, Jo realized that Formentara was not so much angry as . . . worried? Relieved?
“What are you smiling at?”
She dropped the smile. “Nothing. I just . . . well, yes, you’re right. I should be more careful. I wasn’t thinking of how it would affect you if I got killed. Selfish of me.”
Formentara stopped what zhe was doing and regarded Jo. After a moment, zhe said, “All right, yes, fine, I was a little perturbed that you were hit hard enough to kick your augs off-line. I would prefer that you not die, and not just for my own ego. Is that better?”
Jo nodded. “I am touched. Thank you.”
“If I might continue without interruption?”
She lay back. The question was not whether Formentara could fix things; zhe’d already said zhe could. The only question was, how long would it take?
And who knew zhe cared so much? Paying so much for Kay to go hunt? Helping Wink out? Fretting over Jo’s injury? The mahu had hidden depths, it seemed . . .
Thirty-seven minutes for the revamp, as it turned out. And zhe was irritated that it took that long. Zhe had expected, zhe said, that it would take half an hour. A seven-minute gap was like a thousand years, in Formentara-speak . . .
“Okay, we are done. Run a systems check.”
“Stet,” Jo said. “Systems check shows green across.”
“Reboot.”
“Rebooting . . .”
“Recheck.”
“Green.”
“Up, move around.”
Jo was on her feet in an instant, and she felt like Superwoman. It had only been a short time, a few hours, but the returns of power and energy and function were amazing. You got used to being a certain way, you took it for granted; you truly didn’t appreciate how being well felt until you got sick. Then you appreciated the hell out of it.
She could hear, she co
uld see, she could smell, taste, touch, move, all parsecs beyond what she had been able to do after the mortar round had knocked her on her ass.
She was reborn.
They ran through a full-systems diagnostic. Everything was as good as it had been, and on a couple of augs, the subroutines had been improved and were actually better.
“I—thank you,” she said. “I can’t begin to tell you—”
“Yeah, yeah. Go on, go play soldier again. And try not to mess up my work.”
“Yessah, I will do my best.”
– – – – – –
Rags and Gramps were waiting at the conference table when Jo and Gunny arrived. The colonel waved them in; they sat.
“Chocolatte. You are clean and shiny. You look like a woman who just took a fourteen-minute-and-forty-two-second shower.”
“You better not have had a cam in there.”
“Seen one nekkid fem, seen ’em all—no cam. But the water-flow monitors will rat you out every time.”
“And you check them? Don’t you have any real work to do?”
“It is real work; you never know but that an enemy will try to sap our resolve by stealing all our water. After all, isn’t water why we are all here?”
Gunny shook her head. She was gonna have to up her game; he was winning too many of these little dialogues.
Rags said, “Jo, you back up to par?”
“And then some. Formentara was pissed at me for allowing myself to be damaged, but zhe dialed everything back up to full operation. I feel great.”
“Good. Gramps?”
“Okay, here’s the deal: We’ve come up with some names on the biz with the Bax. As nearly as we can tell, there are half a dozen of the aliens in this area whose movements our C-AI have backtracked and determined are likely possibilities to be involved in this.”
“Based on . . . ?” Jo asked.
“Patterns of travel, occupations, plus stuff we should be able to determine but can’t, what sometimes goes with cover identities that seem deep, but too tight.”
Off Gunny’s look, he continued, “Civilized sentients have personal histories, and they tend to be jumbled and sometimes messy. Crafted, whole-cloth IDs are sometimes a little too neat. An AI running down secondary or tertiary links won’t spot any inconsistencies, but past that, they should. If they don’t, if a story seems too perfect? That’s a warning flash. It might mean something.”
“Or not,” Jo said. “Good ID crafters think about such details when they build spy backgrounds, they throw in contradictory stuff.”
“But ‘good’ is a relative term,” Gramps said. “Maybe we have a Bax sneaking around who didn’t get the guy who was top of the ID-maker’s class. Or maybe it was somebody who didn’t think a Bax needed the same layers a human might need. In any event, we have some names, and the C-AI can only do so much. We need some hands-on investigation. It has to be quick because we are running out of war.”
“What exactly are we lookin’ for?”
“Who is doing what and why would be good,” Rags said. “Find the correct person to ask and do it right, maybe they will tell you. Wink will have some chem formulated for the Bax for you.”
“Doesn’t General Wood have her own MI people for this?” Jo asked.
“She does, and they are probably adept enough, but she’s not overly concerned with this intel. All things continuing as they are now, she notches this war, mission accomplished, we all pack up and move along, and who cares what the Bax are up to, it’s not our problem.”
“But you think it is.” Not a question.
He looked at Jo. “Given our recent experiences, things haven’t always been what they seemed, and not knowing the truth caused us some grief. I don’t really care which set of Bax gets the water rights, if that’s what is really going on. That’s not our worry. But anytime somebody is sneaking around doing things that might impact us, I would rather know than not.”
“How would this impact us?”
“Since I don’t know who is doing what and their reasons, I can’t say. Once I know, then I’ll have a better lens to look at it.”
Jo and Gunny exchanged looks.
Gunny said, “Ah’m just a simple fem, Ah go where Ah’m ordered to go and shoot who they tell me to shoot.”
Rags said, “Go find some civilian clothes that will let you blend into the local scenery. The mission parameters are in your tactical comps. Read over the stuff, go see Wink, and make a pass back here before you take off.”
Rags stood, as did Jo and Gunny. Gramps came up, but slowly, and Gunny caught a hint of something flit across his features before he replaced it with a big smile. Hello?
“You movin’ kind of stiff there, old man. Got the rheumatiz?”
“Not me, child. Must be your vision is fogged by unbridled imagination and innate jealousy.”
Rags followed them out into the hall. Gramps did not. Gunny walked a little ways, then turned to him. “Gramps okay?”
Rags looked at her. “Far as I know.”
“He looked a little pained there for a second.”
He shrugged. “I’m not his doctor.”
No, but I know who is . . .
– – – – – –
Wink was on his way to the command conference room when he saw Gunny heading in his direction.
“Hey, I heard you were back. How was it out there. Exciting?”
“Not enough for you. Rags has got Jo and me running an errand in San Antonio, and you are supposed to have some chem for us.”
“Bax giggle juice. Yes, just on my way there.”
He produced a handful of little-finger-sized color-coded poppers from his tunic pocket. “The blue ones are knockouts. Over a big vein is best, takes about five seconds to kick in. Lasts about thirty minutes. After it wears off, use the orange one, and again, IV is quicker. You can ask what you want, they will be happy to tell you. Be careful, one of the side effects is urinary incontinence and sometimes projectile vomiting.”
She took the poppers. “Great. Anything Ah can bring you from town?”
“A cloak of invisibility would be nice.”
“Wouldn’t help, Wink, they’d track your implant.”
“I can disable that.”
She smiled. “Ah got to go. How’s Gramps recovery coming along?”
“I can’t talk about my patients, Gunny, you know that.”
“Come on, it’s Gramps.”
“Don’t worry, he’s fine, small-caliber jacketed bullet punched through clean, didn’t hit anything, he’ll have a couple tiny scars to show for it, nothing permanent.”
He saw the surprise on her face and obviously realized what had just happened.
“Well, fuck! You just ran a con on me! You didn’t know any of that! Dammit, Gunny—!”
“I’m sorry, Wink. The old fart wouldn’t tell me, Rags wouldn’t tell me, and Ah don’t like being out of the loop here.”
He shook his head. “Fine. You didn’t hear anything from me. I will deny it to the heat death of the universe, anybody asks.
“Copy that.”
– – – – – –
When they got back to the conference room after scanning the op data, Jo could see that Gunny was agitated. She didn’t say anything, but there was a tenseness to her body set.
Neither Rags nor Gramps had made it yet.
“Gunny? You okay?”
“Me? Ah’m jest fahn.”
Her accent, Jo had noticed, got a little thicker when she was bothered by something.
Jo waited, not speaking.
“Did you know that Gramps got shot?” Gunny finally said.
“No, really? When?”
“Near as Ah kin tell, when he was runnin’ the FCV during the hurricane.”
“First I heard of it. H
e looks a little careful in his movements, but no indication of any major injury I noticed.”
“No, it apparently wasn’t much. But Ah was talkin’ to him on the fuckin’ com, had to be right after it happened. Ah gave him a call, he didn’t answer, and now Ah know why: He was getting shot and patchin’ hisself up!”
“Well, he seems okay.”
“What Ah want to know is, why’n the fuck didn’t he tell me?”
Jo held her tongue, but the thought was there. Probably for exactly what is happening right now—he didn’t want to upset you.
“You going to say something to him about it?”
“Hell will fuckin’ freeze over before Ah fuckin’ do.”
Ten seconds later Rags arrived, alone.
“Are we copacetic here?”
“Read the material, I don’t see any problems. We’ll go, we’ll poke around, see what we can see.”
“The clock is running. Maybe it won’t make a difference one way or the other, and maybe it won’t matter if we know now or later, but . . .” He shrugged.
“Got it. We’ll make hay while the sun shines. If it ever stops raining.”
NINETEEN
There actually was a lull in the rain, almost no wind, and the sun was already sucking moisture up and turning the air into a steamy miasma.
Jo and Gunny avoided puddles on the way to wait for the transport. Singh, back from the front, walked with them.
They were nearly there when they heard Gramps curse:
“Die, you fucker!”
They looked to see him stomping something into the mud. They went to see what all the fuss was about.
It was a little mottled-gray snake, maybe half a meter long, head crushed flat.
Gunny squatted to look at the dead creature. “Looks like a rat snake,” she said. “It’s harmless, not poisonous.”
Gramps said, “I don’t care. I don’t like snakes. I don’t like poisonous snakes; I don’t like nonpoisonous snakes; I don’t like sticks on the ground that look like snakes.”
“Ah think maybe somebody had a traumatic event with snakes along the way. What, you had a run-in with the serpent that bedeviled Eve back in the Garden?”
Singh raised an eyebrow.