Infinity Squad (16 page)

We had a nice dinner in the cafeteria and for dessert we got to see SMaj Hughes storm in and pull every Immortal away from their meal for a nice, long, 'motivational' run. He was yelling something about 'how could you not even SEE one fucking Hell-Spider' and 'you WILL return with skulls or you will NOT return' as he ran them off towards the horizon.

Dakota even came by the barracks after dinner, causing Zazlu to break out the good beer, and we started a four-way card game, Ann-Marie and I facing each other across the table as one team, and Zazlu facing the happy couple. Juan held the cards but Dakota sat on his lap, choosing what they would play, and she laughed and bull-shitted with us until it was time for lights out. There were a few wolf-whistles when it became obvious that she was staying the night again, but I told the guys to cut it out and they did. So even though the evening ended much more pleasantly for one private than it did for his commanding officer, it was a nice enough finish to the day.

Which of course led to Ann-Marie shaking me awake in the middle of the night while hissing, "Omega Squad's being sent to patrol the valley!"

My head throbbed from all the sleep I wasn't getting. "Huh? Wha- how do you know?"

"Jinx just texted me. Choppers are spinning up."

I cursed and started pulling on my fatigues.

"Jonesy, what the hell?" I growled, storming into TacOps. This time he was brushing cupcake crumbs off his uniform. I glanced down at the Master Map, and sure enough, the valley was red again. The current ops map showed a helicopter drop planned right in the middle of it. Jonesy gave me a sheepish look.

"Forrest, I'm sorry, but my supervisor..."

I looked up to see a tall, muscular cloned soldier coming towards us wearing Captain's bars. The nametag on the fatigues said "Flores".

I dialed it down a little and pointed at the Master Map. "What's the meaning of this? I submitted a report this afternoon showing this valley had been cleared."

Flores pressed his lips together in a tight line. "Yes, I noticed that Specialist Jones had accepted your report during the day," he said primly. "But
tonight
, satellites show significant heat signatures all throughout that valley."

"Those spiders are just passing through!"

"Immortal Squad dropped north of the mountain this morning and had zero contacts. Second Squad did the same this evening and had zero contacts." Flores sniffed. "Passing through the valley is enough to warrant a patrol."

"Hell, Captain, by that logic, the base should be red! A spider 'passed through' our cafeteria a few days ago!"

Flores set his jaw. "Perhaps it
should
. That Hell-Spider killed ME, while you soldiers did nothing to stop him. Now I'm trapped in this body for the rest of my life!"

Oh fuck. Now I had lost him forever.

"Now, Lieutenant, unless you have another report to submit,
which I doubt
, please leave the Tactical Operations Center."

I leaned against the wall outside the Prisoner Holding Area and tried to act casual.

Three-spot. Hear me. It's another emergency.

Two BlackShirts were walking down the hall to me and I started picking my nose. They looked away and moved on.

Three-Spot! I need your hunting parties to clear the area between your caves and the mountain. A patrol is heading there now!

There was a pause in my head, like air leaving a room, and then I heard his gravelly voice again.

"We have made a large kill tonight. The parties will not enjoy leaving it."

Go back for it later! Just a few hours!

"Other predators will be drawn by the blood. And by mid-morning, the lightning snakes will have picked it clean."

A patrol! Metal spitters! Killers coming!

"Stop the patrol."

I can't!

Another pause. More feelings of air rushing out of my head.

"There will be repercussions."

Fine! But the patrol cannot see any of your clan or they will return again and again!

"Very well. I am talking with Red Stripe now."

I unassed from the wall and went to the Comm tower, where I watched with relief as heat signatures disappeared off the satellite screen one by one. And listening to the professional killers of Omega squad grow more and more frustrated every time they had to report 'no contact' made up for the sleep I was missing. As they were getting back on the chopper, muck-covered and exhausted, First Lieutenant Ching even dropped a "Fucking TacOps", which probably set him back 200 Buddhist points.

I smiled all the way back to barracks.

Zazlu, Butcher and I were having another coffee crisis conference. I hoped it wasn't going to become a regular thing.

"It's not enough to turn the analysts," Ann-Marie said. "Flores will just keep overruling them until he agrees."

"Flores will not accept bribes," Zazlu said, frowning. I didn't ask him how he knew.

"Blackmail won't work either," Butcher added. "He's the type to just report us all to Oakley no matter what we threaten to release about him."

I rubbed my face. "Well, what are our options then? If patrols keep going into their home valley, the cease-fire will be broken. We'll have to really fight the spiders, they'll be madder than ever, and god knows how many times we'll have to resurrect." I put my cup down and started pacing quietly, to not wake any of the privates or the reporter sleeping in our midst. "I mean, I'm a clone, and he's a clone. Couldn't I just, like, put on some fatigues that say 'Flores', walk into TacOps when he's in the shitter and change the map for good?"

Butcher was shaking her head. "You have to scan before any map change," she said, holding up the bar-code on her wrist. "And you can't get an official tattoo unless you resurrect in the tank and give his key phrase. Which we're never going to get out of his head."

I rubbed my own wrists, remembering the pain when Doc Murphy had burned my own name and barcode onto them. Both times.

"And even then," Zazlu said, "what are you going to do? Live a secret life as Flores and change the map back before every patrol? You don't have to be a Second Lieutenant to know
that
plan's crazy." Then he looked thoughtful and tapped his chin. "Although... if Oakley saw the area clear on the map and was pleased... Flores might be more willing to let it stay...especially if other areas were reporting enough contacts for patrols."

I turned the plan over in my head. Yes, that might work. Flores was proud enough to want to keep Oakley's approval once he had gotten it, and if the patrols were kept busy in other areas, there wouldn't be a reason to return to the valley...

"But that still doesn't solve the problem of learning his key phrase," Butcher said. "They've told us since Boot that that's the key to our identity now. There's no way to hack that and you're NEVER going to get it out of his head."

My heart sank, but then I started laughing. A lot. "Not unless you have a friendly Hell-Spider who reads minds!"

We were still making the plan up as we went, but it was moving forward. Zazlu caught Flores as he was coming off his night shift, tired and chagrinned that Omega had come up empty on their patrol. A few test tubes of bourbon from the 'Immortal's still' had them relaxed and standing outside of Three-Spot's cell.

"So you really want to see it again?" Zazlu asked, swaying on his feet a little. He wasn't tipsy but could fake it very well. "The spider that killed you?"

Flores was a cocky, arrogant drunk. "Yeah, I do. I might even kill him myself, if Oakley hadn't ordered him kept alive!"

"Let's go then," Zazlu said, ushering Flores into the room. We had prepped Three-Spot ahead of time and he was pacing his side of the room like an animal, and he scratched and clawed at the protective glass when the two entered. Watching from Ann-Marie's hacked video feed of the room, I was impressed with his acting.

"Here the bastard is," Zazlu laughed, pounding on the glass. Three-Spot hissed back, attacking the glass again and then stalking away. "One of his friends got me too, out north of the mountain where they're the thickest." Zazlu drained his test tube and laughed. "And you know what my last thought was, right before the bastard speared me through the chest?"

Flores kicked the glass, sneering at Three-Spot. "What?"

"Holy shit- what happens if I can't remember my key phrase? You know?"

Flores kicked the glass again, drank from his own test tube. "Yeah."

Zaz laughed. "I mean, here I am dying, and all I'm doing is going over my key phrase
over and over again in my mind
, just so I would know it when I woke up." He looked at Flores. "Did you do the same?"

The Captain sniffed. "No. I know my words cold. I'll never forget them."

"Never? Not even in the heat of battle? You'd know your key phrase?"

"Yeah." Flores finished the rest of his tube. "Fuck, look how ugly this bug is. We should stamp them off this planet like cockroaches."

Zazlu nodded. "Yeah." He put an arm around the Captain's shoulder. "Come on, have you seen that blond radio operator yet? I hear she always hits the treadmill in these tiny shorts about now."

"Yeah, but she's a total cocktease-" Flores was griping, as Zazlu led him out of the Holding room.

Butcher and I slipped in a minute later. I looked at the spider expectantly. "So?"

Three-Spot had settled into his yoga pose again, calmly looking at me. "The newcomer did think about something of great importance to him during the Wrester's talk about key phrases. Although I do not care for his views on my clan.
We
can stamp
his kind
out easily, not the other way around."

"He's just ignorant. That's what I'm fighting against. But I need his key phrase to do it. What was it?"

"The meaning was lost on me," Three-Spot's gravelly voice said in our heads. "But this is what he thought." The spider lowered his head in concentration.

What I saw first like a large flapping bug, like a butterfly or a moth. Then the image of a thunder bee like those that had attacked us in the desert. I assumed that Flores had meant an Earth bee and that Three-Spot didn't have the words. And then the images went away.

"That's it?" I asked. "Three-Spot, we need the actual words. Send it again."

He did, but it was the same. A large, floating butterfly. Then a thunder bee.

"That is all he was thinking," the spider said. "Before images of killing my clanmates, and then this..."

A view of the blond radio's reporter's bouncing ass in short shorts filled my and Ann-Marie's heads.

"Ahhh, quit that!" she yelled, slapping at her temples. The image faded from our minds. "Don't you have rules against doing that to other sentient beings?"

"You asked what he was picturing."

"We asked what
words
he was thinking about," I said. "With just this..." I looked at Butcher, and she shook her head. She didn't have it either. I sighed. "Great."

Zazlu, Ann-Marie and I sat at the farthest back table in the barracks as Steve taught the privates how to deal with poisoning and fevers in the field. We each had sheets of paper in front of us, with many, many lines written and crossed out on them.

"Birds and the bees," Zazlu repeated. "It has to be about the birds and the bees."

"They have birds here," Ann-Marie countered. "Three-Spot would have pictured that instead. That was definitely a moth." She crossed out Zazlu's 'Birds and bees' line for the third time.

"I got a butterfly," I said. "It had colors on it."

"Butterflies and bees?" she asked. "Insects? Flying? What's the connection? And what's the phrase?"

"He was adamant that he wouldn't forget it," Zazlu said. "It has to be something well-known. Famous." We sat, stumped, until Zazlu slapped his hand down on the table. "The
birds
and the bees," he said again.

Butcher and I groaned, then groaned again as our door opened and SMaj Hughes strode in. He looked at the privates, half of them pretending to administer cold compresses to the other half lying on the floor. "Well isn't this just the cutest little tea-party," he smiled at them, his bald head wrinkling. He saw us in the back of the room and smiled wider. I noticed his running boots had been freshly polished. "You ladies ready to do some
real
work today?"

Hughes ran us out to the flightline and beyond again, because Oakley was convinced we had somehow set him up with Dakota to be embarrassed in the cafeteria in front of the farmers, since the only hanging skulls were ours. You can't argue with logic like that, especially when it's wearing three General's stars.