by Rick Shelley
Over a period of several weeks, and through a series of fights, he had found his place in one gang of circus boys. Social standing was determined strictly through physical domination and strength, as purely as if they were not human but some extinct species of predators.
He had been running with the gang one afternoon in April, a school holiday. The sound of a gunshot had drawn them around a corner and down the alley. The boys, eight of them, had seen the culmination of a murder. The victim was on his knees, bleeding. His attacker stood three feet away, a revolver in his hand. The gun had seemed gigantic to Lon, and the blast it made when it was fired a second time sounded as loud as thunder from a lightning bolt that had struck very close. Blood had spurted from the forehead of the victim. He fell backward. Once he came to rest, he moved no more. His attacker went through his purse and pockets, grabbing what little money the victim had. Then he ran off, giving the gang of boys no more than a passing glance, obviously giving no thought to the possibility that they might identify him.
A siren sounded. “We gotta scram,” the leader of the pack said. But like the others, he had to get closer first, to see what death looked like. The boys had formed a circle around the dead man. Then a new blast from a police siren brought them out of their shared trance. “Run for it,” the leader said, and they ran, getting clear of the area before the police arrived.
With his eyes open, Lon could still almost see that body, smell the gunsmoke and the other odors of that neighborhood and a man who had died violently. He remembered not fear, but the thrill that he had felt, the excitement. Lon closed his eyes. The memories had caused his heart to beat faster. His breathing had become shallower, labored, as if he were running from that death again.
“That was a long time ago, and a lot of light-years away,” Lon whispered. He sat up, trying to banish the childhood ghosts. Of the seven boys he had run with that year, two had died violently before their sixteenth birthday, and two had simply disappeared—run off or abducted. Kidnappings in the circuses were never for ransom. No one in them had the money to make that attractive to even the most desperate of criminals. Kidnappings were to find prostitutes, or victims for snuff movies.
“It’s a wonder anyone ever lived long enough to reproduce,” Lon mumbled. He got up and headed for the latrine. The circuses never faded away to ghost towns. The population always seemed to increase. Kids started having sex as soon as they were physically able, and puberty often occurred when they were ten or eleven years old. Girls often had their first baby—or their first abortion—before their twelfth birthday. Lon had been twelve when he had sex for the first time. It had cost him four bits, half his weekly allowance. That had bought him ten minutes with a girl who was two years older than him, and who already had two children. She had been nursing the younger of the two when Lon was brought to her. The baby had cried the whole time his mother was with Lon. The girl was thin, almost emaciated, and—even through the fog of distant memory—extraordinarily plain-looking, but Lon had visited her almost every week for six months, saving as much as he could from his allowance to give him those few minutes of … not-quite-pleasure.
“Hey, Nolan! We’re going to eat.” Corporal Nace had just come into the third platoon’s bay. Lon was sitting on the edge of his bunk again—had been for most of the past two hours. He had not tried to sleep again after his waking dream.
Lon nodded slowly and got to his feet. Now he was tired, his mind almost numb enough for sleep. But that would have to wait—if there was still time for sleep after a protracted meal. The way my luck’s going, the lieutenant will tell us it’s time to go back to the surface, Lon thought as he followed Wil Nace to where the men from fourth platoon were waiting.
They sat together but ate in comparative silence. There was none of the free exchange of jokes and gossip that had marked meals in garrison, or on the voyage out. The little conversation there was was conducted in low tones, with minimal words. Lieutenant Taiters came in twenty minutes after they started. He asked how everyone was feeling and said that there was still no word on when they might be shipped back to the surface, so they could get at least a couple of more hours of sleep. There were no cheers, nothing more than nods from a few men.
“I’m going to head back and sack out now,” Lon announced shortly after the lieutenant left. “I haven’t got the energy to lift another forkful of food to my mouth.” He was slow to get to his feet, though. His exhaustion was real, and more pronounced once he had mentioned it.
Halfway back to the barracks bay, Lon stopped and leaned against the wall. Continuing felt … futile. He toyed with the idea of sliding to the deck and resting, maybe even sleeping. Only the thought of Nace and the others coming along and finding him asleep on the floor in the hall made it possible for Lon to resume his walk. When he got to his bunk, he collapsed across it, face first, asleep before he stopped bouncing. This time there were no dreams, or nightmares.
“Nolan!”
Lon felt himself being shaken, but even that could not wake him quickly. He had to fight his way through a stupor. Only when his mind placed him back on the surface of Norbank, perhaps in imminent danger, did he snap all of the way back from sleep. The transition then was abrupt.
“I’m awake!” he announced, too loudly.
“Relax, Lon. It’s just me.” Lon recognized Lieutenant Taiters’ voice then and sat up.
“Sorry.” Lon rubbed at his eyes. “I guess I was pretty deep.”
“I was beginning to think I’d have to throw cold water on you to wake you.”
“What time is it?” Lon looked around as if trying to reassure himself that he was still in the safety of Long Snake.
“Oh-two-hundred,” Taiters said.
“Wow, I guess I’ve been out for close to nine hours.” He shook his head. “I must have been more unconscious than asleep.”
Arlan smiled. “It happens. You go for a few days with little or no sleep and then when you get the chance, your body demands all it can get … especially after time in the tube.”
“What’s up? Are we going back to the surface?”
The lieutenant nodded. “We’ll be leaving in a little more than an hour. Time to get cleaned up and get in one last shipboard meal before it’s back to battle rations.”
Lon got to his feet and spent a moment yawning and stretching. “Any change in conditions dirtside?”
“There’s been no major fighting, but CIC thinks that the rebels are gearing up to risk everything on one throw of the dice. It looks as if they’re marshaling all of their forces for one pitched battle. Don’t worry about that yet. Go get your shower and do whatever else you need to do. I’ll wait.”
When Nolan returned from the latrine, Taiters was sitting on the next bunk, leaning forward, forearms on his thighs, head down. But he looked up when he heard Lon coming. Lon went to his locker and started dressing.
“It doesn’t seem very smart for the rebels to risk everything on one battle,” Lon said when he was half dressed. “I mean, wouldn’t the smart thing be for them to, you know, melt into the woods and just stall? They have to figure that we’re not here forever. All they’d have to do is wait until we pull out and come back out. Even if we trained government forces, they wouldn’t have us to worry about.”
“You don’t have to convince me. But maybe they’re not using just their brains. It’s a civil war. They’re making emotional decisions. Maybe they want revenge for what we did to them last night. Maybe they figure their support will erode if they don’t force the issue now. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got some pickled soothsayer giving orders. Come on, finish dressing and leave the strategy to others. Let’s go get that meal.”
The men from fourth platoon had already started toward the mess hall. Lon and Arlan caught up with them. The group was still quiet, but not as completely as before. Sleep and time away from danger had loosened the straps of silence. The table talk was still scanty, but not absent. Mostly they talked about rejoining the co
mpany and getting back to business.
“The sooner we get this fight over, the sooner we can get on to the training phase of the contract, and the sooner we’ll get home,” Wil Nace said.
“We’ve got scores to settle first,” Tarn Hedley, one of the privates in Nace’s squad, said.
“Can that, now!” Nace said. “You’re no rookie. Don’t let emotion screw you up. We’ve got a contract to fulfill. Period.”
Hedley did not respond, but Owl Whitley, from the platoon’s second squad, did. “Don’t build a monument out of that ‘business first, last, and always,’ Corp. This ain’t recruit training back home, with by-the-book questions and answers. You feel this as much as we do. We lost good mates down there. Ain’t no way in hell we can forget them, and there’s no reason we should.”
“Every man who joins the Corps knows the price he may have to pay,” Nace said, setting down his knife and fork. “It goes with the job. And there’s nothing in the Articles of Charter about vengeance. You get to thinking about hating the other side, and that leads to nothing but trouble. You been in the Corps long enough to see anyone punished for war crimes, Whitley?”
“Yes, but that was some loser who thought rape and murder of a noncombatant were okay. This is different.”
“Before we head out to the hangar, you’d best take a few minutes to reread Section Three of the Articles, Whitley. There are damn good reasons why we have strict codes of conduct and severe punishments for violations. It’s not just a matter of morality, of philosophical notions of right and wrong, though that’s an important part of it. The Corps trades on its reputation—not just our reputation for military ability but also for the honorable behavior of our people. A lot of people wouldn’t want to invite a horde of Visigoths to their world. If they think we’re worse than what they’ve got, it’s no sale, no matter the danger they think they’re in.”
“No one’s saying you should just forget fallen friends,” Lieutenant Taiters said. “But you’ll honor their memory more by not losing sight of why we’re here, what we’re all about. The Corps puts a lot into earning respect. One black mark can take ages to erase. There are still places where what the Corps did on Wellman, nearly a hundred years ago, is remembered and held against us. That was the one time when the Council of Regiments lost sight of what we’re about, what we’re supposed to be about.
“Now, enough of this. We’ve got about time for dessert and another drink before we head to the armory for weapons and then go on to the hangar. Let’s save the philosophy for garrison.”
“What was that about Wellman?” Lon asked the lieutenant after they left the mess hall. The enlisted men were farther ahead, walking to the armory.
“It’s why there’s no Ninth Regiment anymore,” Taiters said. “Didn’t they cover that in your recruit training lectures?”
“I don’t remember hearing about it,” Lon said. Arlan shook his head. “I thought they made sure everyone heard about that. They did when I joined the Corps.” “Well, what was it?”
“Wellman was a small colony world, I guess not much more populous than Norbank. We were hired by off-worlders to go in and make it possible for our employers to exploit a natural product that existed nowhere else, some sort of organic compound that was a natural superconductor. That was bad enough, against the code of ethics of the Articles. But beyond that, the contract was bungled from start to finish. The Ninth Regiment was virtually destroyed by the farmers of Wellman. Then the Council of Regiments compounded the problem by sending in more forces—ostensibly to fulfill the contract, but more to get revenge.” Taiters shook his head. “A few men from the Ninth had been taken prisoner. Most went over to Wellman’s side. They helped train the world’s population and they stood the Corps off again. The Corps’ General was removed by unanimous vote of the Council of Regiments, which then resigned en masse after ordering courts-martial for themselves and the deposed General.”
“I’m sure nothing was said about that in training. I wouldn’t have forgotten that.”
“I hope we’re not forgetting that lesson,” Taiters said, more to himself than to his companion.
18
Altogether, a dozen soldiers rode the shuttle down. The rest of the troop compartment was filled with supplies, primarily food and ammunition. Cases were secured using the safety straps that would normally keep soldiers in place as well as added ties to make certain that loads did not shift or come loose. Dirigenter shuttles were designed to be versatile.
There was no talk among the men once they entered the shuttle and took their seats. Each of them had the visors of their helmets down, hiding their faces. Rifles were secured. Safety harnesses were fastened, tightened as far as possible.
Lon listened to the routine warnings from the pilot. The hangar was depressurized, the door opened, the shuttle pushed out into space. Lon expected the shift, anticipated being thrown against his straps. The moments of maneuvering to get away from Long Snake seemed routine now, and even the blast of the shuttle’s engines did not catch him by surprise this time.
Going in, he told himself as the lander made its first burn. The pilot was not quite so … enthusiastic as during the initial assault. The craft accelerated toward the ground, but the gee-forces were not what they had been during the first landing on Norbank—at least it did not seem nearly so extreme to Lon. Maybe I’m just getting used to it, he thought There was never the sense of breathlessness, the feeling that he was near to graying out at the tug of acceleration or deceleration. Lon did not even bother to stare at the nearest monitor to watch their progress.
The shuttle was in the upper reaches of Norbank’s atmosphere before a troubling thought came to Lon. How can we keep all emotion out of what we do? If we kill without emotion, what does that make us—machines, or something worse? He was distracted by memories of the talk in the mess hall. Maybe revenge isn’t the emotion we should have, but there should be some feeling, some realization of what we’re doing. He shook his head. The lieutenant was right. The time for philosophy is when we’re in garrison, back on Dirigent.
“We’re going in at Norbank City’s spaceport, just west of the town,” Lieutenant Taiters said, breaking Nolan’s chain of thought. “It will mean a bit of a walk to get back to the rest of the company, but you and I have orders to report to Colonel Flowers first, and he’s in the city now.”
“What does the colonel want from us?” Lon asked.
Arlan chuckled. “Major Black didn’t provide any details. He just said to report to the old man. You’re not still thinking that you’re in any kind of trouble, are you?”
“No, I guess not. But I can’t help but wonder.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
The shuttle braked early, then circled around to land on the improved strip of clay that Norbank City called a spaceport. Coming in for the landing, Lon was certain that the stresses were less than they had been the first time, though the shuttle still came in faster than a civilian shuttle would have.
“Make sure your safeties are on,” Taiters told the men. “We’re almost in town, at least two miles from any enemy.”
They did not race from the lander to take up defensive positions. Lon could see guards—mostly locals but with a few DMC soldiers at key locations—posted along the perimeter of the port, looking outward. A staff sergeant came out to meet them—specifically Lon and Arlan.
“I’m to conduct you straight to the colonel, sir,” the sergeant said after saluting. “Sorry, but we don’t have any transport but what you’re standing on.”
“Don’t worry about it, Sergeant,” Taiters said. “We’ve had our rest. The exercise will do us good.” The lieutenant told the other men to find a spot nearby and get some rest, that he would be back as soon as possible. No one complained about the delay in returning to the company … and possibly to fighting.
The walk was not excessive, perhaps a mile and a quarter. Lon saw differences from his first visit to the city almost at once. There
were people out and about, even women and children. A few shops were open. A farmers’ market had been set up within a block of where the front lines had been. Since the rebels had lifted the siege, produce had been able to make it in from farms west of the city—those farms that had not been burned or robbed by the rebels.
“They’ll all be buttoned down tight by sunset,” the sergeant said, “but they’re making the most of a day with no snipers. Can’t tell what’ll happen after dark. There might still be rebels close, what with ‘em not using electronics the way we do.”
“Works both ways, Sergeant,” Taiters said. “They can’t tell where we are by our electronics either.”
Lieutenant Colonel Medwin Flowers was sitting in the shade next to a two-story building that bore the legend “Government House” over its entrances, drinking a pale yellow liquid from a tall glass. Two locals in fresh suits sat facing the colonel. They also had drinks. Major Black stood to the side. When the major saw the approaching trio of soldiers he pointed them out to the colonel, who then set his drink aside. Lon could see that the colonel said something to the two locals; then he stood and moved away from them. Black came with him.
When Lieutenant Taiters took off his helmet, Lon quickly did the same. Neither of the senior officers was wearing a helmet, though Major Black was sporting the earplug of a radio.
“Forget the formalities, gentlemen,” Colonel Flowers said before Lon could snap to attention and salute. “This is informal.” He grimaced and shook his head slightly. “You’ve had a rough go of it. But I want you both to know that I think you did a commendable job under the most trying circumstances. There’s no way to be certain, but it may be the actions of your platoon, Lieutenant, as much as what happened earlier, that broke the siege of this city.”