The Forever War Series Page 8

  Suddenly, a seam appeared in the building and widened to the size of a large door. Taurans came swarming out.

  ‘Grenadiers, hold your fire. B team, laser fire to the left and right — keep’m bunched up. A and C, rush down the center.’

  One Tauran died trying to run through a laser beam. The others stayed where they were.

  In a suit, it’s pretty awkward to run and keep your head down at the same time. You have to go from side to side, like a skater getting started; otherwise you’ll be airborne. At least one person, somebody in A team, bounced too high and suffered the same fate as Chin.

  I was feeling pretty fenced-in and trapped, with a wall of laser fire on each side and a low ceiling that meant death to touch. But in spite of myself, I felt happy, euphoric, finally getting the chance to kill some of those villainous baby-eaters. Knowing it was soyashit.

  They weren’t fighting back, except for the rather ineffective bubbles (obviously not designed as an anti-personnel weapon), and they didn’t retreat back into the building, either. They milled around, about a hundred of them, and watched us get closer. A couple of grenades would caulk them all, but I guess Cortez was thinking about the prisoner.

  ‘OK, when I say “go,” we’re going to flank ’em. B team will hold fire … second and fourth platoons to the right, sixth and seventh to the left. B team will move forward in line to box them in.

  ‘Go!’ We peeled off to the left. As soon as the lasers stopped, the Taurans bolted, running in a group on a collision course with our flank.

  ‘A team, down and fire! Don’t shoot until you’re sure of your aim — if you miss you might hit a friendly. And fer Chris’ sake save me one!’

  It was a horrifying sight, that herd of monsters bearing down on us. They were running in great leaps — the bubbles avoiding them — and they all looked like the one we saw earlier, riding the broomstick; naked except for an almost transparent sphere around the whole bodies, that moved along with them. The right flank started firing, picking off individuals in the rear of the pack.

  Suddenly a laser flared through the Taurans from the other side, somebody missing his mark. There was a horrible scream, and I looked down the line to see someone — I think it was Perry — writhing on the ground, right hand over the smoldering stump of his arm, seared off just below the elbow. Blood sprayed through his fingers, and the suit, its camouflage circuits scrambled, flickered black-white-jungle-desert-green-gray. I don’t know how long I stared — long enough for the medic to run over and start giving aid — but when I looked up the Taurans were almost on top of me.

  My first shot was wild and high, but it grazed the top of the leading Tauran’s protective bubble. The bubble disappeared and the monster stumbled and fell to the ground, jerking spasmodically. Foam gushed out of his mouth-hole, first white, then streaked red. With one last jerk he became rigid and twisted backwards, almost to the shape of a horseshoe. His long scream, a high-pitched whistle, stopped just as his comrades trampled over him. I hated myself for smiling.

  It was slaughter, even though our flank was outnumbered five to one. They kept coming without faltering, even when they had to climb over the drift of bodies and parts of bodies that piled up high, parallel to our flank. The ground between us was slick red with Tauran blood — all God’s children got hemoglobin — and like the teddy bears, their guts looked pretty much like guts to my untrained eye. My helmet reverberated with hysterical laughter while we slashed them to gory chunks, and I almost didn’t hear Cortez:

  ‘Hold your fire — I said HOLD IT, goddammit! Catch a couple of the bastards, they won’t hurt you.’

  I stopped shooting and eventually so did everybody else. When the next Tauran jumped over the smoking pile of meat in front of me, I dove to try to tackle him around those spindly legs.

  It was like hugging a big, slippery balloon. When I tried to drag him down, he popped out of my arms and kept running.

  We managed to stop one of them by the simple expedient of piling half-a-dozen people on top of him. By that time the others had run through our line and were headed for the row of large cylindrical tanks that Cortez had said were probably for storage. A little door had opened in the base of each one.

  ‘We’ve got our prisoner,’ Cortez shouted. ‘Kill!’

  They were fifty meters away and running hard, difficult targets. Lasers slashed around them, bobbing high and low. One fell, sliced in two, but the others, about ten of them, kept going and were almost to the doors when the grenadiers started firing.

  They were still loaded with 500-mike bombs, but a near miss wasn’t enough — the concussion would just send them flying, unhurt in their bubbles.

  ‘The buildings! Get the fucken buildings!’ The grenadiers raised their aim and let fly, but the bombs only seemed to scorch the white outside of the structures until, by chance, one landed in a door. That split the building just as if it had a seam; the two halves popped away and a cloud of machinery flew into the air, accompanied by a huge pale flame that rolled up and disappeared in an instant. Then the others all concentrated on the doors, except for potshots at some of the Taurans, not so much to get them as to blow them away before they could get inside. They seemed awfully eager.

  All this time, we were trying to get the Taurans with laser fire, while they weaved and bounced around trying to get into the structures. We moved in as close to them as we could without putting ourselves in danger from the grenade blasts, yet too far away for good aim.

  Still, we were getting them one by one and managed to destroy four of the seven buildings. Then, when there were only two aliens left, a nearby grenade blast flung one of them to within a few meters of a door. He dove in and several grenadiers fired salvos after him, but they all fell short or detonated harmlessly on the side. Bombs were falling all around, making an awful racket, but the sound was suddenly drowned out by a great sigh, like a giant’s intake of breath, and where the building had been was a thick cylindrical cloud of smoke, solid-looking, dwindling away into the stratosphere, straight as if laid down by a ruler. The other Tauran had been right at the base of the cylinder; I could see pieces of him flying. A second later, a shock wave hit us and I rolled helplessly, pinwheeling, to smash into the pile of Tauran bodies and roll beyond.

  I picked myself up and panicked for a second when I saw there was blood all over my suit — when I realized it was only alien blood, I relaxed but felt unclean.

  ‘Catch the bastard! Catch him!’ In the confusion, the Tauran had gotten free and was running for the grass. One platoon was chasing after him, losing ground, but then all of B team ran over and cut him off. I jogged over to join in the fun.

  There were four people on top of him, and a ring around them of about fifty people, watching the struggle.

  ‘Spread out, dammit! There might be a thousand more of them waiting to get us in one place.’ We dispersed, grumbling. By unspoken agreement we were all sure that there were no more live Taurans on the face of the planet.

  Cortez was walking toward the prisoner while I backed away. Suddenly the four men collapsed in a pile on top of the creature … Even from my distance I could see the foam spouting from his mouth-hole. His bubble had popped. Suicide.

  ‘Damn!’ Cortez was right there. ‘Get off that bastard.’ The four men got off and Cortez used his laser to slice the monster into a dozen quivering chunks. Heart-warming sight.

  ‘That’s all right, though, we’ll find another one — everybody! Back in the arrowhead formation. Combat assault, on the Flower.’

  Well, we assaulted the Flower, which had evidently run out of ammunition (it was still belching, but no bubbles), and it was empty. We scurried up ramps and through corridors, fingers at the ready, like kids playing soldier. There was nobody home.

  The same lack of response at the antenna installation, the ‘Salami,’ and twenty other major buildings, as well as the forty-four perimeter huts still intact. So we had ‘captured’ dozens of buildings, mostly of incomprehensible pur
pose, but failed in our main mission, capturing a Tauran for the xenologists to experiment with. Oh well, they could have all the bits and pieces they’d ever want. That was something.

  After we’d combed every last square centimeter of the base, a scout-ship came in with the real exploration crew, the scientists. Cortez said, ‘All right, snap out of it,’ and the hypnotic compulsion fell away.

  At first it was pretty grim. A lot of the people, like Lucky and Marygay, almost went crazy with the memories of bloody murder multiplied a hundred times. Cortez ordered everybody to take a sed-tab, two for the ones most upset. I took two without being specifically ordered to do so.

  Because it was murder, unadorned butchery — once we had the anti-spacecraft weapon doped out, we hadn’t been in any danger. The Taurans hadn’t seemed to have any conception of person-to-person fighting. We had just herded them up and slaughtered them, the first encounter between mankind and another intelligent species. Maybe it was the second encounter, counting the teddy bears. What might have happened if we had sat down and tried to communicate? But they got the same treatment.

  I spent a long time after that telling myself over and over that it hadn’t been me who so gleefully carved up those frightened, stampeding creatures. Back in the twentieth century, they had established to everybody’s satisfaction that ‘I was just following orders’ was an inadequate excuse for inhuman contact … but what can you do when the orders come from deep down in that puppet master of the unconscious?

  Worst of all was the feeling that perhaps my actions weren’t all that inhuman. Ancestors only a few generations back would have done the same thing, even to their fellow men, without any hypnotic conditioning.

  I was disgusted with the human race, disgusted with the army and horrified at the prospect of living with myself for another century or so … Well, there was always brainwipe.

  A ship with a lone Tauran survivor had escaped and had gotten away clean, the bulk of the planet shielding it from Earth’s Hope while it dropped into Aleph’s collapsar field. Escaped home, I guessed, wherever that was, to report what twenty men with hand-weapons could do to a hundred fleeing on foot, unarmed.

  I suspected that the next time humans met Taurans in ground combat, we would be more evenly matched. And I was right.

  Sergeant

  Mandella

  2007—2024 AD

  1

  I was scared enough.

  Sub-major Stott was pacing back and forth behind the small podium in the assembly room/chop hall/gymnasium of the Anniversary. We had just made our final collapsar jump, from Tet-38 to Yod-4. We were decelerating at 1½ gravities and our velocity relative to that collapsar was a respectable .90c. We were being chased.

  ‘I wish you people would relax for a while and just trust the ship’s computer. The Tauran vessel at any rate will not be within strike range for another two weeks. Mandella!’

  He was always very careful to call me ‘Sergeant’ Mandella in front of the company. But everybody at this particular briefing was either a sergeant or a corporal: squad leaders. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’re responsible for the psychological as well as the physical wellbeing of the men and women in your squad. Assuming that you are aware that there is a morale problem aboard this vessel, what have you done about it?’

  ‘As far as my squad is concerned, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We talk it out, sir.’

  ‘And have you arrived at any cogent conclusion?’

  ‘Meaning no disrespect, sir, I think the major problem is obvious. My people have been cooped up in this ship for fourteen—’

  ‘Ridiculous! Every one of us has been adequately conditioned against the pressures of living in close quarters and the enlisted people have the privilege of confraternity.’ That was a delicate way of putting it. ‘Officers must remain celibate, and yet we have no morale problem.’

  If he thought his officers were celibate, he should sit down and have a long talk with Lieutenant Harmony. Maybe he just meant line officers, though. That would be just him and Cortez. Probably 50 percent right. Cortez was awfully friendly with Corporal Kamehameha.

  ‘Sir, perhaps it was the detoxification back at Stargate; maybe—’

  ‘No. The therapists only worked to erase the hate conditioning — everybody knows how I feel about that — and they may be misguided but they are skilled.

  ‘Corporal Potter.’ He always called her by her rank to remind her why she hadn’t been promoted as high as the rest of us. Too soft. ‘Have you “talked it out” with your people, too?’

  ‘We’ve discussed it, sir.’

  The sub-major could ‘glare mildly’ at people. He glared mildly at Marygay until she elaborated.

  ‘I don’t believe it’s the fault of the conditioning. My people are impatient, just tired of doing the same thing day after day.’

  ‘They’re anxious for combat, then?’ No sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘They want to get off the ship, sir.’

  ‘They will get off the ship,’ he said, allowing himself a microscopic smile. ‘And then they’ll probably be just as impatient to get back on.’

  It went back and forth like that for a long while. Nobody wanted to come right out and say that their squad was scared: scared of the Tauran cruiser closing on us, scared of the landing on the portal planet. Sub-major Stott had a bad record of dealing with people who admitted fear.

  I fingered the fresh T/O they had given us. It looked like this:

  I knew most of the people from the raid on Aleph, the first face-to-face contact between humans and Taurans. The only new people in my platoon were Luthuli and Heyrovsky. In the company as a whole (excuse me, the ‘strike force’), we had twenty replacements for the nineteen people we lost from the Aleph raid: one amputation, four deaders, fourteen psychotics.

  I couldn’t get over the ‘20 Mar 2007’ at the bottom of the T/O. I’d been in the army ten years, though it felt like less than two. Time dilation, of course; even with the collapsar jumps, traveling from star to star eats up the calendar.

  After this raid, I would probably be eligible for retirement, with full pay. If I lived through the raid, and if they didn’t change the rules on us. Me a twenty-year man, and only twenty-five years old.

  Stott was summing up when there was a knock on the door, a single loud rap. ‘Enter,’ he said.

  An ensign I knew vaguely walked in casually and handed Stott a slip of paper, without saying a word. He stood there while Stott read it, slumping with just the right degree of insolence. Technically, Stott was out of his chain of command; everybody in the navy disliked him anyhow.

  Stott handed the paper back to the ensign and looked through him.

  ‘You will alert your squads that preliminary evasive maneuvers will commence at 2010, fifty-eight minutes from now.’ He hadn’t looked at his watch. ‘All personnel will be in acceleration shells by 2000. Tench … hut!’

  We rose and, without enthusiasm, chorused, ‘Fuck you, sir.’ Idiotic custom.

  Stott strode out of the room and the ensign followed, smirking.

  I turned my ring to my assistant squad leader’s position and talked into it: ‘Tate, this is Mandella.’ Everyone else in the room was doing the same.

  A tinny voice came out of the ring. ‘Tate here. What’s up?’

  ‘Get ahold of the men and tell them we have to be in the shells by 2000. Evasive maneuvers.’

  ‘Crap. They told us it would be days.’

  ‘I guess something new came up. Or maybe the Commodore has a bright idea.’

  ‘The Commodore can stuff it. You up in the lounge?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Bring me back a cup when you come, OK? Little sugar?’

  ‘Roger. Be down in about half an hour.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll get on it.’

  There was a general movement toward the coffee machine. I got in line behind Corporal Potter.

  ‘What do you think, Marygay?�
�

  ‘Maybe the Commodore just wants us to try out the shells once more.’

  ‘Before the real thing.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She picked up a cup and blew into it. She looked worried. ‘Or maybe the Taurans had a ship way out, waiting for us. I’ve wondered why they don’t do it. We do, at Stargate.’

  ‘Stargate’s a different thing. It takes seven cruisers, moving all the time, to cover all the possible exit angles. We can’t afford to do it for more than one collapsar, and neither could they.’

  She didn’t say anything while she filled her cup. ‘Maybe we’ve stumbled on their version of Stargate. Or maybe they have more ships than we do by now.’

  I filled and sugared two cups, sealed one. ‘No way to tell.’ We walked back to a table, careful with the cups in the high gravity.

  ‘Maybe Singhe knows something,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe he does. But I’d have to get him through Rogers and Cortez. Cortez would jump down my throat if I tried to bother him now.’

  ‘Oh, I can get him directly. We …’ She dimpled a little bit. ‘We’ve been friends.’

  I sipped some scalding coffee and tried to sound nonchalant. ‘So that’s where you’ve been disappearing to.’

  ‘You disapprove?’ she said, looking innocent.

  ‘Well … damn it, no, of course not. But — but he’s an officer! A navy officer!’

  ‘He’s attached to us and that makes him part army.’ She twisted her ring and said, ‘Directory.’ To me: ‘What about you and Little Miss Harmony?’

  ‘That’s not the same thing.’ She was whispering a directory code into the ring.

  ‘Yes, it is. You just wanted to do it with an officer. Pervert.’ The ring bleated twice. Busy. ‘How was she?’

  ‘Adequate.’ I was recovering.

  ‘Besides, Ensign Singhe is a perfect gentleman. And not the least bit jealous.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ I said. ‘If he ever hurts you, tell me and I’ll break his ass.’

  She looked at me across her cup. ‘If Lieutenant Harmony ever hurts you, tell me and I’ll break her ass.’