Rebels in Arms Page 3

  “Sir, I’d be happy to debate this after we obtain our objective.”

  “Oh, we’ll be talking. And you won’t be happy.” I cleared the skin near my face so he could see my blackest look. “Let’s go!”

  We stole our way along the east side of the building, darting between walkways, knee walls, and low-lying shrubs until we neared another entrance where four Marines had set up a bunker using lightweight alloy blast plates to create a silvery carapace behind which they had manned their big guns. Artillery fire from one of our guns had blown apart the shield, and “smart schrap” from the shell had ignited to repeatedly poke at the Marines’ combat skins like a billion tiny, sharp-edged jackhammers making one hundred thrusts per second. Their remains, covered by pale, wet viscera, lay across the shattered blast plates.

  I waved Javelin ahead of me. “Good,” he said. “We’ll coordinate from here.”

  “Get the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth out of there,” I said. “Get them back to their original positions.”

  “Sir, I say again. The Fifty-first is getting its ass kicked in there.”

  “Not for long. Just get your squads. Cover us when we come out.”

  I started for the doors, one of them hanging half off from the blast.

  “Sir, you’re not going in there?” Fanjeaux asked.

  “Just wait for my signal.”

  Javelin smiled, probably glad I wanted to take off on what he deemed a suicide run. “Yes, sir.”

  I stepped over the dead Marines, ducked, and forced my way past the shattered door as I heard Javelin give the order over the general frequency for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Squads to fall back and reinforce the Sixteenth outside. With the Fiftieth Platoon back in line, all I had to worry about now were the Fifty-first and Fifty-second, whose mission was to enter admin and neutralize the enemy while attempting to cause minimal damage to the structure, no small feat to be sure.

  Even as I left the door and turned right, down a corridor that would take me past a long bank of offices, I heard the muffled booming of microcharges and the closer rat-a-tat of particle fire. With the light sticks mounted on the wall either shattered or flickering, I paused, brought up a thermal view in my HUV, then reached for a Ka-Bar. The sickly sweet odor of something burning made me grimace and search for its source.

  Perhaps twenty bodies lay along the corridor, some Alliance Marines, others green recruits from my own company. The computer zoomed in on each of the casualties, identified the victim, then noted the loss in our central database. Familiar names flashed again and again, the computer now a beacon of death holding me in its light. Nearly every member of the Seventeenth Squad lay in the hall, incinerated by the Western Alliance’s latest toy: a silent laser rifle that dismembered you with surgical precision. For nearly all of my people, this had been their first and last combat experience. As the centuries-old superstition dictated, you died either at the beginning of your service or at the very end…

  I found my mouth opening, words coming in a gasp, “Oh my God…” In all the chaos, I had failed to keep close tabs on the number of troops I was losing.

  Someone rounded the corner ahead. I tensed, shrinking to my knees. My HUV zoomed in, IDed the soldier as Aaron Cavalier, whose surname befit him. Though he, too, was about as green as his people, he had taken on the responsibility of commanding three squads with a chilly detachment that had infuriated me. Recently, I had become nervous when a rumor reached my desk about his using “jaca,” a synthetic narcotic that hides itself from detection. I had offered him a subtle warning about “medications,” and he had simply yessed me to death. Young Mr. Cavalier had no idea of what he would face, and the fact that he seemed to breeze through his life, numbed perhaps by drug use, made me believe all the more that his rude awakening would strike a much harder blow than it did to the average guardsman.

  Cavalier staggered down the hall, his skin down, his particle rifle hanging limply from his side. As he drew closer, I saw a burn on the side of his head—a near miss from one of those lasers. He drew closer, tripped over a corpse that had once answered to him, then fell to his knees.

  “Cavalier,” I called, de-skinning so he could see me better.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, oblivious to my approach, though I came directly toward him.

  “Lieutenant, it’s me.” I reached him, grabbed his wrist, helped him to his feet, dragged him toward the wall.

  He furrowed his brow, spoke in a weird lilt. “Oh, yeah. The captain. The big man. Got the Racinian conditioning. Got the superhuman alien parasites in your head. Trying to save the galaxy before you become an old man, so they say. Got the big command going. Trying to stay alive so you can make sure they spell your name right in the history logs but lookin’ kinda depressed and makin’ me think that maybe, just maybe, who knows, maybe you want to die.”

  I grabbed him by the neck. “Lieutenant, where’s the rest of your platoon?”

  He returned a zombie’s stare. I shoved him away, took off running down the corridor. “Computer? Can you locate Captain Halitov yet?”

  “Negative.”

  It took me about five minutes to get down two levels to the offices of South Point’s Honors College, where, according to my tactical computer, the rest of Cavalier’s platoon had become pinned down by roughly three squads of Marines. I crouched before a pair of glass doors, chanced a quick look:

  A maze of corridors and offices inside made for an urban combat environment that even the most experienced troops would dread. By the time your computer told you a Marine was hidden behind a desk, that Marine would already be dodging from cover and firing.

  Tight quarters or not, I was responsible for every soldier crouching within that maze, and the fact that the Marines were tightening their perimeter, getting ready to flush them out, turned that sense of responsibility into a deafening roar to help them.

  I got on Cavalier’s command frequency. “Sergeant Canada? Copy?”

  “Copy, sir,” said the young woman whom I imagined poised behind some piece of furniture, her short, brown hair damp with sweat, her narrow green eyes pleading. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the LT. But he just…he just walked away.”

  “Copy, Sergeant. You got command.”

  “Sir?”

  “In about ten seconds, you’re going to be surrounded. I want you to push all three squads back, toward the main entrance, north-side. Get them into the stairwell and get them out of here.”

  “We’re falling back, sir?”

  “Affirmative. Now go!”

  “Aye-aye, sir!”

  Even as she barked the orders to her people, particle fire from the Marines cut loose with an echoing report that would’ve driven any de-skinned combatant to his knees, clutching his ears.

  Knife in hand, I opened the door, ran forward, reached an intersection in the corridor, glanced right, left, locked gazes with a Marine kneeling against the wall, not more than two meters away.

  Even as he fired, I ran to the wall, up it, tipping sideways on my own volition and coming over him. I doubted he had ever seen a conditioned soldier because my maneuver so stunned him that he broke fire, turned, and gaped up at me as I dropped on him, driving my Ka-Bar past his combat skin and into his gut. The fact that I was able to penetrate his skin with a mere blade further surprised him, and that was probably his last thought, accompanied by a horrible sting I knew all too well.

  To describe the next thirty minutes in gut-wrenching detail would, some argue, be cathartic. Not for me. Suffice it to say that all but three of my people got out while I summarily and unceremoniously killed all twenty-two enemy Marines. Were it not for my combat skin, my hands, arms, chest, and legs would’ve been soaked in blood. How many parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and children would cry because of what I had done?

  When I was finished, I hit the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. I reached the first floor landing, seized the door, swung it toward me.

  A Marine guarding
that door from the other side whirled, brought his rifle to bear on me while jamming his boot into the door.

  I groped for the bond, believing I could find the particles between me, the air, and the rounds soon to explode from his muzzle. I would apply force to those rounds, to that bead, bend the stream back toward him like a garden hose that would spray into his face. I had seen Major Yakata perform a similar feat, and I had employed the same technique on Gatewood-Callista. Before the Marine would realize what was happening, his own rounds would have gnawed into his combat skin, then his flesh and bone and brain.

  The rounds came, all right, striking my combat skin squarely in the chest and driving back toward the opposite wall. I dodged right, reached the wall. Dodged left, hit another wall. I started for the staircase.

  Then a sudden boom reverberated through the well. The Marine’s skin sparked, veins of energy fingered their way across his shoulders, then the skin darkened and sloughed off. A strange look came over his face as the rifle fell from his hand, and he collapsed a second later, revealing Battalion Commander Disque, clutching a smart schrap grenade launcher, smoke rising from its muzzle.

  “Captain, I want you topside. I want what’s left of Zodiac Company stationed along the perimeter. Grid points should already be uploaded. We’ll talk about this fuck up later.”

  “Yeah, Yankee Company’ll mop up your mess,” said Derick Kohrana, Yankee’s captain and company commander. He slipped in behind Disque, clearing his skin to reveal girlish lips and a face that looked pretty, even while twisted in disgust. I barely knew Kohrana, heard he was quite a womanizer with those big eyelashes and smooth line of bullshit. I hated him. He went on: “I don’t know why everybody thinks these conditioned guys are the way to go. I really don’t.”

  “You can stow that and get your platoons in here,” Disque told him. “Now!” Kohrana left, then Disque faced me, gaze still flaming. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

  “Sir!” I hustled around him, into the hall, and jogged by a long line of guardsmen from Yankee Company double-timing in the opposite direction. “Computer? Location of Captain Halitov?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Set alert if his tac comes back on-line.”

  “Alert set.”

  I had no idea what the hell had happened to my friend, and his absence made me realize just how much I had come to depend on him, not just as a fiercely loyal XO, but as the last vestige of my old life, of my early days at the academy, of a time when both of us had been blithely unaware of what was to come. I remember the night my brother Jarrett had told me he was dropping out of the academy. He represented home to me, and his leaving meant that I would no longer be safe.

  As I ran down that hall, I felt just as vulnerable as I had that night at the academy. Rooslin was gone. After Jarrett, Rooslin had been my home. Now I was the only one left.

  Much to my chagrin, Yankee Company managed to neutralize the Marines inside the admin building. In fact, within six hours, our battalion, along with two others, took control of the academy grounds. Thankfully, Disque was so busy with logistical concerns that he had, thus far, not had the time to tear me a new orifice for my company’s failure.

  With our atmoattack jets streaking overhead in a clear display that we also controlled the skies, I sat on a collapsible chair outside my new command tent, waiting for my second lieutenants to report, waiting for my computer to tell me something, anything, about Halitov.

  Javelin came loping over, stood at attention. “Sir, reporting for debriefing, sir!”

  “At ease. Get two more chairs out of the tent. Bring them out here.”

  Not thrilled by the errand boy task, Javelin groaned, “Aye-aye, sir.”

  He disappeared into the dusty brown hemisphere that blended into the landscape. Second Lieutenants Aaron Cavalier and Grace Thomason arrived, Cavalier still appearing only half-present, Thomason brooding over something that seemed to turn her dark skin even darker. Her nostrils flared as she met my gaze, snapped off a salute, gave the standard acknowledgment, then turned her big brown eyes away.

  Javelin returned with the chairs, and I gestured that the three take seats. Javelin and Thomason were clearly bewildered by my informality, which was, of course, lost on Cavalier.

  “So we fucked up today,” I began.

  “And you want to sit around and chat about it, sir?” asked Javelin.

  “As a matter of fact I do.”

  Javelin nodded, decided to press another button: “Sir, have they located Captain Halitov’s body yet?”

  “Captain Halitov is still MIA. Presumed alive.”

  “That the official word?”

  “That’s my word.”

  “Sir, permission to speak off the record, sir?” asked Thomason.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Halitov’s probably dead. I lost nearly half my platoon. Cavalier lost even more. And for what, sir?”

  “Not glory,” said Javelin as he widened his gaze on me. “’Cause like you said, we fucked up. Sir.”

  “I got drafted into this, made an officer just ’cause I got a college degree,” Thomason said. “You know, at first, I really thought we were doing something noble. Fighting for what you said—a just and lasting peace. The alliances have been exploiting the colonies for far too long. But sir, Scott…it’s all bullshit, man. It’s just about money. And land. Our side is as corrupt as theirs, but at least they’re going to win. They have more resources, more personnel. Period. I watched so many of my people die today, and I’m just…I don’t know if I can do this. It’s more than just morally and ethically wrong. It’s suicide.”

  There I sat, looking at them, my command staff: a pain in my ass know-it-all, an unconfirmed junkie, and a conscientious objector. For a second, I wished I were back on Gatewood-Callista, in charge of my platoon. I actually wished that Sergeant Mai Lan, mutinous bitch though she had been, was working with me. She hated my guts and thought I was wrong about everything, but she had been far more capable than any of these people. Javelin was a noncommissioned officer who had cashed in on the war’s demand for personnel by lobbying hard for his commission. Cavalier, like Thomason, came from the farms of Tau Ceti XI, where he had earned his degree in agriculture, then had received the word: you’re drafted. Dodging the draft was punishable by a long prison sentence, even death in extreme cases. I should have sympathized more with those two, but they weren’t like me, soldiers who wanted to find out what duty, honor, and courage really mean. Thomason had once told me that she was not supposed to be shouting at troops. She was supposed to be teaching high school science to a class of bright-eyed young colos. Cavalier just wanted to be out in the fields, with his crops, figuring out new ways to yield even more food. Perhaps the violence of war, standing in such sharp relief to a field of corn nodding in the breeze, had driven Cavalier to find an escape through hallucinogens. I vowed that before we left Exeter, he would come clean with me, or I would do everything in my power to get him discharged. I had already debriefed him privately, had stripped away his command and given it to his platoon sergeant, but that hadn’t seemed to faze him.

  “Sir, did you hear what I said?” Thomason asked.

  “Yeah. And sorry, Lieutenant, but I’m not in the mood to change your mind.”

  That hoisted her brows.

  “You three think Halitov and I don’t have enough experience for this command. Yeah, maybe you heard about what we pulled on Gatewood-Callista, how many Marines we took out, but I know you still don’t think we’re capable. Truth is, none of us is ready for this. And I’m not sure there’s any amount of training that can prepare you for what we’ve seen. But here we are, in the shit. And we will make the best of it because I’m in command. No other reason. We won’t decide on our own who needs help and who doesn’t. We won’t reinterpret orders to suit ourselves. We won’t suddenly decide in the middle of combat that our political biases and agenda have changed and that maybe it’s not right to kill these people anymore. Finally, we won
’t numb ourselves to the world. We’re going to keep our minds clear and do our jobs. You fucked up inside because you didn’t trust in me. I’m making the decisions. I’m not going to hesitate. I’m not going to steer you wrong. And if I ever do, I’m going to pay for it with my life. You can count on that. Now that’s the end of my little heart-to-heart. Comments?”

  Cavalier’s chin slowly lifted. “When are we gonna eat?”

  I was about to lean over, grab him by the ear, and shake him until all that garbage in his head oozed out and allowed him to return to us, but Lieutenant Colonel Disque came marching up the hill, toward our powwow.

  Javelin glanced at the lieutenant colonel. “Shit. Are we dismissed, sir?”

  “Dismissed.”

  “Captain St. Andrew,” Disque called, singing my name in a tune that might as well be my funeral hymn. “Finished debriefing your three losers?”

  I rose, snapped to, and issued my salute, as my people practically ran off. “Sir, my platoon leaders have been debriefed, sir.”

  “At ease, Captain,” he said, then dropped heavily into one of the chairs Javelin had failed to pack away. “You know on my way up here, I passed this long line of glad bags, and I have to tell you, most of the bodies stuffed in them were from your company. You dropped in here with a hundred and sixty-two. What do you got left, son?”

  I sat, cleared my throat. “Sir, roll stands tall at eighty-nine, sir.”

  “Stands tall? Are you kidding me? They condition a fuckin’ gennyboy, somehow he gets ahold of a company, loses his XO, loses nearly half his people. Jesus Christ!”

  My brother’s words haunted me once more: You’ll always be a gennyboy first, an officer second. The only way you’ll get respect is by earning it through what you do—and even then they’ll talk behind your back. I’m telling you this because you’re my brother. You have to hear it.

  Every muscle in my body tightened, and I imagined myself throttling the lieutenant colonel right there. He had called me gennyboy, and I could report him for that. But he knew I wouldn’t start that fire between us.