I heard Vronsky, keying in on override. “Cease fire. Cease fire. That’s it. We’re all done.”
Which meant, I suppose, that every last Xú on this nameless old ice-moon was dead. I safed my weapons and went to look for the rest of my people.
Lining up the dead, tending to the wounded, setting up field hospitals in that little hole in the ground, gathering up body parts, doing what we could. Not so bad, I guess. Twenty percent KIA, maybe twice that many wounded badly enough to need a little time off. Puts us down around forty percent effective strength. We’d be back up top in time for our next drop. There were probably enough ready reserves coming out of Basic to fill in the holes...
I found Jimmy Dietz and Wu Chingda quickly enough, made sure they were squared away, could get everything they needed. Saw to some of the jemadars-minor. Not too bad. Officer and non-com casualties light. That’d make things a bit easier.
Went over to where they were lining up the dead bodies.
Voice whispering in my ear: “Jemadar-Major?”
Recognizable voice. “That you, ah, Schmidt?” Pleased with myself, able to recognize a private trooper’s voice and associate it with his name, though I felt like I’d been blown into some other dimension.
“Yes, sir.” He said, “You’d... better come over here, sir.”
Odd.
I walked over to where he was kneeling, beside the still, armored form of some fallen soldier. His comrade, perhaps. His very close friend. But it was unusually tall armor, making my heart stop in its tracks.
I kneeled down beside him, reached out and cleared the armor’s faceplate, looked in at Solange Corday.
Not like she was asleep, no. Soft brown eyes open, looking at some faraway sky, some distant horizon. Watching the clouds, maybe, blowing past the gray stone of some bare Ethiopian peak. Watching the sand drift low above the Sahara, boundary-layer streams coursing along like some strange, gritty mist, grains whispering to each other in the wind. Mouth open slightly, teeth glittering within. Surprised.
Me? Now?
But I’m not ready.
Another pair of trooper’s boots standing on the bare ice beside us, and I looked up at a blank, armored visage, armor marked with jemadar-minor’s rank, Kathy Lee Mendoza’s ID badge.
Vronsky’s voice spoke in my ears: “Morrison?”
“Uh. Here, m’am.”
“You in one piece?”
“Yes, m’am.”
“Good. Granny Jones is numbered among the KIAs. I’m going to field-brevet you to rissaldar-minor so you can take over what’s left of her battalion.”
“Yes, m’am.” I could picture her, just as though she were standing beside us, a thin, fierce, black-eyed woman, steel-gray hair drawn up in a bun...
Vronsky said, “Make your appointments-of-rank and get your ass over here.”
“Yes, m’am.” I got to my feet slowly, still looking down at Solange Corday.
“Colder than ice,” said Kathy Lee. “Colder than black fucking ice.” She put her arm around me and we stood holding one another for just a minute, then went on about our business.
o0o
1230 hours. Sitting at a table in the battalion corvette’s wardroom, hands around a warm mug of coffee, sitting across from Wu Chingda, who’d made jemadar-major, had taken over the regiment in my place.
Tired-looking Wu Chingda, pretty Chinese face lined with fatigue. Drinking a mug of strong, red tea, what they used to call British Army tea, more caffeine in it that your usual sort of coffee.
Well. We’d have time to rest now, troopers, hale and wounded alike, packed aboard the corvette, seven days flight-time, three hundred parsecs or so to the next assembly point. By then most of my wounded would be off the sick list, their armor repaired or replaced. Probably pick up a few replacements in transit, go off to the next drop, with more weeks in which to train, to make ourselves whole again.
She yawned, mouth opening wide, still seeming small and dainty, rubbed her narrow eyes, blinked hard. I was conscious of a sudden erection building itself under the table.
She drank more tea. Smiled at me. Said, “I guess I shouldn’t be drinking this. I have a hard enough time sleeping as it is.”
I looked down into my own mug, swirled sugary brown coffee, watched it ripple back and forth. “Yeah.”
She said, “Hell, maybe we should rethink the doctrine of not taking burdars into combat...”
Looked into her eyes. Nothing there. “Maybe so.” Took another drink of coffee. Tried to will myself cold.
She stood, stretched, muscular back arched, small breasts pushing out the front of her tunic. Tossed her mug in the trash. “See you in the morning, Ath.” Walked away, maybe conscious of me watching her. Maybe not.
I continued to sit there with my coffee, sipping it as it grew stone cold, for a long while. Finally went off to bed.
o0o
Soldiers falling, like a black cloud from the sky, on some urban Xú colony world. Defensive weapons trying to pick us off, failing, defeated by some new technology the Masters pulled from their bag of magic tricks. Maybe they’d had it all along. Hard to say. You could imagine them assessing the situation, handing us the least sophisticated weapon they thought would suffice.
They kept on, it seemed, underestimating the Xú. But then, their resources were large, their pockets deep, and those of the Xú were not. Just a few months from that first hard attack, that first bitter battle, and already the Xú were falling back, losing world after world, retreating toward hearth and home.
Preparing, I suppose, to go down fighting.
I wondered if there would be any left, by the time this was all over, to recruit as comrades. After each new battle, I wondered how many of us would be left to recruit them.
o0o
City streets. Like the city streets on many a civilized world. Like the city streets on old Earth. Streets of stone. Buildings of steel and glass and shiny ceramic. Buildings holed. Buildings falling. Buildings on fire.
Armored soldiers retreating before us. Dying. Killing us when they could. Less and less successful as time went on. Unarmored Xú outnumbering the soldiers a thousand to one in those city streets. Holing up in shelters. Shelters bursting open, casting them out in the fire.
Image of myself crouching down in the useless shelter of an irregular concrete staircase, stairs suited to the needs of a many-legged Xú, stairs blasted open now, no more than a tangle of twisted, rusty rebar.
Xú civilian tottering around in that street, hair on fire, staggering back and forth, waving its arms as it burned, calling out, a high, mournful, piping cry. I lifted my sidearm, ready to knock it down, quiet the poor bastard...
Some weapon across the way sparkled, exploding the burning Xú, splashing a red mess in the street. That’s it, soldier. Put him out of his misery. I lifted my weapon and fired on that other Xú’s position, killing him. Too bad, brother. Should’ve let the silly civilian son of a bitch burn.
Jesus. I’ve got four thousand troopers to look out for now. Can’t be letting myself get pinned down like this.
“Ching.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Regiment in position?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Home on my beacon. We clean out this one little nest, we can move on.”
“Yes, sir.”
Not having much luck with this damned shit-hole of a planet. Somebody’s great idea we’d capture a few Xú general staff, see what goodies we could extract. Nothing so, far. I could hear Kathy Lee’s voice, an hour before we dropped: This is damned stupid. Bomb the place flat. Bypass it, get on to someplace real...
Seemed real enough just now.
Wu Chingda’s people suddenly spilled over me like some monstrous horde of locusts, firing on the Xú HQ building, fire exploding from all the windows, going in. Going in for the kill.
We lost six. There wasn’t one fucking Xú survivor.
o0o
Another world. A pale blue sky. Far away clou
ds. Distant blue mountains covered by haze. A forest of beryl-crystal green, broad, fuzzy leaves whispering in the wind.
Black smoke towering in the distance, coning up at a steep angle from a burning city, shearing off suddenly at the top, reversing direction, carried away by high-altitude winds.
We sat in a field of soft yellow grass, Shrêhht and I, she crouching on the grass itself, I on an old Xú blanket I’d found, setting out my picnic lunch, admiring the pretty pictures threaded in gold into the indigo cloth. Hunting themes. Old time hunting themes. Xú banded by straps of dark leather, Xú bearing short, stout composite bows. Xú shooting down things that might be animals. Animals with eight legs and two arms. Animals that looked a little bit like the Xú themselves, but not much. Animals hung up by their arms and legs, dangling over slow fires, rotating on spits. Animals laid open, belly up on wide log tables. Animals being eaten by merrymaking Xú.
So what if the implications of this are true? Irrelevant. It’s not what we’re punishing them for. Not that we’re punishing them, you understand. Just beating them.
I leaned against Shrêhht’s pebbly flank and drank a bottle of sweet ale Ching had given me, watched the city burn, watched the pretty trees wave in the wind, while Shrêhht drank her pizza-flavored kerosene and we talked about times, old and new.
She’d like to visit Earth again. Nicest beaches in the universe.
I thought so too, but still...
Maybe we could visit Hanta Sheqari together, afterwards. Seems like a nice enough place. Ought to be real pretty, once all the soldiering bullshit is cleaned up and gone.
Something exploded in the depths of the burning city, flaring yellow white for just a moment, throwing up a ball of red-black smoke that curled as it mixed with the rest of the plume, rising high before it completely disappeared. Listened for the boom of the explosion, but it never came.
Shrêhht: War’ll be over soon. I’m due for quite a bit of leave.
Me too. Where’ll we go?
Have you ever been to Kkhruhhuft?
Once, very briefly, about fifteen years ago.
I’d like you to visit my home with me, Athol Morrison. You can bring a burdar, if you want.
Kkhruhhuft, bleak desert world, glimpsed in transit. Yes. I’d like that.
Over in the burning city, a tall tower began to lean, vast sparks rising from its structure, leaning, leaning, toppling away into the holocaust consuming its fellows. More smoke, dense, oily-looking, hiding the tops of the remaining towers.
Word is, she told me, that we’ll be going to Xú itself...
Do they really call it that?
I don’t think so. Does it matter?
No. I guess not.
After a while I lay down on the blanket and closed my eyes, let the warm yellow sun of this nameless place beat down on my face, felt it burning my skin clean, clean and dry. Peaceful. That’s how this feels. Warm. Nice.
I may have fallen asleep, maybe not. In any event, the sun had moved a long way across the sky when a distant, shuddery boom, long and drawn out, made me open my eyes. The burning city had fallen in upon itself at last, buildings collapsed together into a pile of rubble, and the fires were beginning to die down, the smoke beginning to thin. By nightfall, nothing would be left but red embers.
Those would, I thought, look rather pretty from way out here. Glowing. Like some vast, infinitely-distant campfire...
o0o
I could feel the corvette’s deck vibrating softly under my feet, feel Ching’s small breasts pressing into my chest, my hands on the narrow hardness of her back, drifting down onto the bunched muscle of her buttocks. Kissing her, feeling her small tongue search inside my mouth, wishing I were anywhere but here and now. Just pretending...
She put her head down on my shoulder and I heard a soft exhalation, breath warm on my neck, kept my arms around her, opening my eyes, hardly seeing anything, rather willing myself to stay blind. It was almost dark in my cabin, only a dim light on over my little desk, turning the room into a shadowland that hid more than it revealed.
Wu Chingda, jemadar-major, regimental commander looking up at me, face seeming, somehow, swollen, black eyes narrowed to tiny, unreadable slits.
“Not a good idea, rissaldar-minor...” she whispered.
“No. Not very good.” But we kissed again, ground against each other softly.
She stood back from me a little way, lifted her hands and unbuttoned her high collar with its three-diamond insignia, then the next one and the next, until her tunic was open on an expanse of smooth, tawny skin. She reached up and rubbed her thumb over my one star, then fingered my collar button. “Rank-and-rank, Athol Morrison.”
As simple as that. I reached for my own buttons, watched her undress, quick, efficient, decisive.
Naked, standing before me, she looked like Hani and yet not like Hani. That same smooth Asian skin, but lighter, from a more northerly clime. Face a little rounder, eyes a little narrower. Hips a little broader, breasts a little larger.
Body lined and corded with the sleek, functional musculature of a woman soldier. Not as strong as me, no, nor even as strong a Solange. But I’d seen her disarm another trooper, a man half-again my size, while they were having a disagreement. Took his sidearm out of its snapped-shut holster and got it settled on the bridge of his nose before he could do more than blink and reach.
Came into my arms when I was naked as well, curling herself around me, molding her body to my shape. Warm. Terribly human.
She whispered, “Will you be wanting me to transfer out after this?” Voice quiet, steady, no tremor of dismay.
I cupped one hand under a small buttock and lifted her against my chest. “You sure you want to do this...”
A small nod against my shoulder. “For just a moment,” she said, “I’d like to pretend I’m someone I’m not...”
“No. I don’t want you to transfer out.”
We lay down on the tiny bunk, barely able to stuff ourselves onto what was really no more than a padded shelf, running our hands over sensitized skin, exploring one another’s faces.
“Who?”
A puzzled look.
“Who do you want to be?”
Faint, shadowy smile. Then she said, “Someone a man can love without being... paid and ordered.”
I thought about it, nodded slowly. “Seems like a simple enough wish...” I put my hand between her legs and squeezed gently, watched her close her eyes and arch against building sensation. I knew it wasn’t what she meant, but what else could I say?
Maybe that was all she wanted me to say.
“And,” she said, “when we put on our clothes again, we’ll realize this didn’t happen. We’ll remember that it happened to two other people. People who live far away from here.”
I felt a slight pang, a small twisting inside, quickly and easily subdued. “Fair enough,” I said.
o0o
Shrêhht and I sat together on the promenade-deck of a transport large enough to carry an entire legion and then some, sat together and watched it happen. We’d be down there in a little while, a matter of a few days, but there’d be very little for us to do. Not after this.
The Xú homeworld began as a bright blue ball, more ocean than anything else, frosted with lines of streaming clouds, patched here and there with low-lying green continents, lit by the light of its fine white sun, the reflected light of its two large moons, each more than a thousand kilometers in diameter, one close, only a ten or so diameters out, the other remote, more than fifty.
We were joined by some of the others, comrades of Shrêhht, marked by ID paint and emblems of rank, humans like mice lurking among them, Wu Chingda and Jimmy Dietz, Kathy Lee, a few officers from the other battalions of Vronsky’s brigade.
Defensive action ended. We’d knocked down all their satellites, killed their warships, watched them plunge through air, sheathed in burning plasma, watched them explode in the sea, come apart over the land. There were burning forests below,
burning cities, all for naught.
Somewhere, down below, soldiers would be girding for battle, waiting for us to come. Waiting so they could carry a few of us with them into whatever the Xú used for Hell.
Shrêhht keyed her vocoder, which said, “Four, three, two, one...”
I felt Ching’s hand on my forearm, squeezing.
And the skies lit up all around us, Master Race warships pouring their vengeance down upon helpless Xú, who would, now, be just so many more poor-bastard natives.
Fire falling on all the cities, falling on mountains, boiling all those pretty lakes and rivers that looked so inviting when seen from the depths of space. Exploding the icecaps. Plucking ships from the sea, planes from the air, derailing the fancy monorail trains.
It would go on, we were told, for about an hour. Just enough time for one little lightning bolt to fall on every square meter of the planet. Then we’d go down and see what was left. Maybe dig a few survivors out of deep tunnels. Round up a few prisoners, if any Xú was willing to remain alive...
There’d been maybe thirty billion of them, scattered around on a few dozen worlds, when we came. I guess we’ve got a few thousand prisoners left in stock. Maybe we could put them in a zoo somewhere. Fires were spreading out down below now, the very stone of the ground coagulating, becoming first lakes, then seas of lava, flooding out over the landscape.
Well. It would be over in just a little while. Fine with me. I’m ready to go home.
o0o
Months and months go by, and I am back atop a high plateau on Karsvaao, back at the little spaceport, watching people and cargo loaded aboard a lighter. Standing looking down at Hani. She is still pretty, still slim, still my quiet little island girl. Looking up at me, holding one little brown bag by its shoulder strap, the same bag she had in her hand the day she arrived, on another world, far away, years ago.
There were dark circles under her eyes, a final sign of our last night together that no sparse makeup could wash away, the shadows of sleeplessness, lips still a little swollen from my attention, hair neatly combed and pinned, but still somehow in disarray.
Well, she would sleep on the transport, could sleep for weeks if she wished, all the long way home.
When Heaven Fell Page 30