Stark's Command (22 page)

"A commander must bear responsibility for many things, but few are harder than these matters you discussed. You have heard of von Clausewitz?"

Stark thought a moment. "He's that German that Mendo, excuse me, that your son mentions every now and then."

Lieutenant Mendoza smiled. "I have spent many hours discussing von Clausewitz's work with my son. I am pleased he is sharing that learning with his comrades-in-arms."

"He shares, Lieutenant, but he's pretty careful about it. He doesn't like to talk much. A lot of times I have to drag stuff out of him."

The smile shaded into a mild frown. "That is regrettable, but understandable. I was forced to become more outgoing by my responsibilities as an officer. It appears my son's similar introversion has instead been encouraged by his low rank."

Stark nodded. "I did my best, Lieutenant, but it wasn't my job to remake the personalities of my soldiers. Right? But I want Mendo to speak up more. He's got a good head and knows a lot of theory I never picked up."

"Thank you. I would suggest placing my son in positions where his opinions are required. He will rise to the occasion. As for theories, their value can be overblown, but von Clausewitz has a deserved reputation, in my own opinion."

"So what's he say that applies to me right now?"

"Sergeant, one of the things von Clausewitz proposed is that there are two kinds of courage a good commander must have. The first kind of courage is the type everyone thinks of—the courage of fighting well on the battlefield. The second kind of courage, though, applies off the battlefield. It is the courage to make the right decisions in leadership away from combat, in all the matters of training, equipping, and planning. To make the right decisions and to stick with them despite all the political and bureaucratic forces seeking to corrupt them. This second kind of courage is in many ways more difficult than the first, for decisions must be made and held to without the force of enemy action driving and enforcing them."

"Huh." Stark took another drink, grimaced, and shoved the cold coffee away. "I've got to do that? Since I'm in command, I've got to make everything stick?"

"I am afraid so, Sergeant. There are many ways to fail in command positions. I cannot claim to have been a perfect officer in any sense of the word, and I made my share of mistakes, but I like to believe I did so out of inexperience or lack of knowledge, rather than failure to adhere to higher principles when it mattered."

Stark rubbed his eyes with one hand. "The more I learn about this job, the less I like it."

Lieutenant Mendoza leaned forward slightly, eyes intent. "If you succeeded in everything you desired, it is not impossible that you could reach a higher command position, perhaps even command of a national military."

"Jeez." Stark didn't bother to hide his shiver. "Don't scare me like that. You're supposed to be motivating me, Lieutenant."

"The prospect is truly unwelcome?"

"Damn right. I'd go back to my Squad in a heartbeat."

"Then why don't you?"

Stark looked around helplessly. "I can't. I've got a job to do. There's people depending on me. I can't let them down."

Lieutenant Mendoza rose, nodding with evident satisfaction. "Sergeant Stark, I will do my utmost to aid you. Because I know what you do is right. And because I believe you when you say you neither want this 'job' nor would seek another. If you can hold to that despite the temptations of rank, you will succeed in your effort."

"Thanks." Stark stood in turn, shaking Lieutenant Mendoza's hand as it was extended. "There's so much I've got to straighten out. It's good to know I'll have help like yours."

Lieutenant Mendoza smiled again. "Do not discount the help of your friends, Sergeant. They appear to have aided you well in the past."

"Well, yeah. Hey, I just figured something out. You came here to evaluate me, didn't you? Find out how I was really handling this job?"

"You are correct. I never doubted my son's assessment of you as a squad leader, but many lower-echelon commanders have been overwhelmed by the demands of greater responsibility."

"That I can understand," Stark chuckled. "And it might still happen. Good night, Lieutenant. We both need sleep. And don't worry, I'm gonna have that dinner."

"I no longer doubt that, Sergeant. Good night."

The ground trembled, quivering erratically beneath Stark as enemy shells landed all around the Knoll. Someone nearby had been screaming for a while, suffering from pain too intense for their med-kit's drugs, or maybe their med-kit had simply exhausted its supply. The screaming had that thin, wavering quality that meant the soldier making it didn't have much longer to live. Everything Stark could see seemed to be viewed through a gauzy haze formed of smoke, dust, fear, and exhaustion. They'd been under constant fire and bombardment for hours now. His system buzzed with fluctuating static from heavy jamming, providing no link to however many other soldiers still survived. Over Stark's left shoulder, the sun still hung above the tree line, crawling slowly down the sky, oblivious to the soldiers praying for the partial concealment darkness would offer.

A hollow-eyed figure a few meters from Stark turned her head, shocking him since her extended immobility had convinced Stark she was long since dead. She'd lost her head armor somehow, and blood from a jagged wound along her temple had run down the side of her face to dry in a mottled red mask. Her lips, chapped and torn, moved, forming words that couldn't be heard over the thunder of explosions and the stutter of small arms fire. Stark stared, trying to read the words. Where. Where's. Oh. No. Our. Coming? Commander. Where's our commander? The other soldier shuddered suddenly, then buried her face in the faded green grass, oblivious to the blood spotting it.

Stark's eyes shot open, his breath coming in heavy gusts, sweat spotting his skin.
Damn. That was a bad one. Vic might have been wrong when she said I never left Patterson's Knoll, but I sure as hell visit that godforsaken spot every night.
Silence reigned in the room, a strange counterpoint to the long-ago explosions he could still hear in his mind. Instead of harsh sunlight, darkness surrounded him, relieved only by the pale glow of the night-light. The air felt cool, tasteless the way only reprocessed lunar air could be.

He frowned, grasping at a fleeting fragment of his dream. The other soldier. She hadn't been there. Not really. Had she? Asking for their commander. No, she would have said Lieutenant, or Captain. Now, he was the commander. Had she been asking him for help?
Great. My flippin' subconscious is merging the Knoll with my problems right now. Just what I need.
The only thing missing from the dream had been a gaggle of civs looking on and applauding the quality of the entertainment.

But civs hadn't put him on that Knoll. Not directly. And they weren't the ones shooting at him.
Real basic stuff. Who's the enemy? Why's that so hard to figure out sometimes?

Stark lay on his bunk, staring upward, imagining the layer of rock above, the thin patina of dust above it, then the airless, empty expanse running away forever, dark and silent.
People. We're alone out here, as far as we know, the only minds able to realize we're surrounded by endless nothing. Which should make us important. It should make us want to huddle together like Earth was our campfire, the only real light and warmth in a real big night. But we don't.

He was missing something. By every measure Stark could think of, his soldiers and the civilians of the Colony should be natural allies, working together. Instead, they were usually at each other's throats.
So, how come
I
don't think the civs are out to use us? How come I can talk to them? I've had the same experiences everyone else has in uniform, so it can't be just that. Was growing up civ so much different than growing up mil?

A very long time ago, it seemed, blurred by intervening years and intense experiences since enlisting in the military. Stark tried conjuring up memories.
I used to think about going places. Anywhere I wanted. Yeah. Walk out the door, go across town or across the country. No big deal. Did Vic grow up that way? No. Mil kids grew up on Forts and Bases. Walls around them. Gates. You go a lot of places, but they're all on the Fort, and even there are a lot of other places that are off-limits.

He had something there.
I think that way now, too, right? The world has fences around it. I live inside the fences. Outside, if I get sent overseas, there's people who're trying to kill me. If I'm at home, people still want me inside the fence.
Even the kids, he now realized.
Never met one, but we told jokes about them. Saw a few, didn't I? Can't remember, now. But I never talked to one. They were different. Huh. So you grow up thinking everybody outside the fence doesn't want you, and when you're all grown up and go outside on your own they want you even less.

That's it. At least part. Mil grows up inside. Civs don't want them. But what about civs? Hell, my life wasn't perfect. Freedom. Do whatever I want—as long as I have the money to pay for it. Money makes the civ world go around. Got a lot and people listen to you. Don't got a lot, and . . . nothing you do really matters.

He sat up, face unfocused as memories came to life. High school. A teacher, given the thankless task of instructing teenagers on American history and civic responsibilities. Stark remembered, suddenly clear, as if he were sitting in that uncomfortable chair again, bored, almost automatically downloading bits of data into his brain so he could spill it out during the mandatory learning standards exams and then delete it all to make room for the next batch of trivia. Funny how your mind could learn to do that. No wasted effort, and no bother trying to understand the mass of detail they were expected to "learn."

The teacher, his name lost somewhere in the past but his face still clear in Stark's mind, had been sitting at his desk. Like most teachers, his eyes spent most of their time on the display built into the desk, reading out the learning standards for the day. This day he'd suddenly stopped, looking up at his students, who'd taken a few moments to realize that fact, and look up from their own displays where the same data scrolled by.

"What does all this mean?" he'd asked.

A pause while students frantically searched their displays for the answer and came up negative. "Sir?" one of the girls finally ventured. "Where's the answer?"

"Inside you. Or, it should be."

Blank stares, until one of the boys raised his hand. "Do we have to know this if it isn't going to be on the tests?"

The question made the teacher shake his head slowly and sadly. "No. That's rather odd, isn't it? I mean, here I am supposed to be teaching you about civic responsibilities, and yet nothing I teach you really matters unless it matches one of the test questions, does it? I guess that means your civic responsibilities are limited to passing that test, doesn't it?"

Silence, students eyeing one another now. Stark recalled going through the emergency drill in his mind, wondering if the teacher was about to go violent on them.

But the teacher simply stood, looking around pensively. "Now, there's tests and there's tests. Some tests you take on a terminal, punching in whatever answers we've previously spoon-fed you. That way you get a diploma, the school looks good, and we get teaching bonuses. Everybody wins. But there's other tests. Tests of citizenship. Someday, you'll be eligible to vote. How many of you are planning to do that?"

A few hands raised tentatively, bringing a weary smile to the teacher's face. "You see, we teach you all sorts of trivia about something called civic responsibility. But the fact of civic responsibility, the duty of voting, somehow doesn't get taught, does it? Do you know how many of your ancestors died so that you could vote?" He leveled a finger toward one student. "How many of your ancestors died fighting for freedom?"

"Fighting? You, mean, like, in the
military
?" The student seemed scandalized at the concept. "We're not . . . my family wouldn't do that."

"I'm sure they did, once. Listen to me. All of this information you're supposedly learning means nothing if you don't make use of it. You, what's the difference between someone who doesn't vote and someone who can't vote?"

"Uh, I . . . that's not on the test."

"So why should you know the answer?" the teacher asked rhetorically. "Let me ask this. You will be able to vote when you reach your eighteenth birthdays. It's not very hard. You can do it on-line, from the comfort of your home or office. They've made it very easy to vote, but very few people bother. Why?"

"Why bother?" one of the students had shot back, sparking laughter. "I mean, it don't mean nothing."

"Nothing? The ability to choose the most powerful and influential humans on Earth means nothing?"

Another student piped up. "It's all rigged. Big money chooses the candidates. It doesn't matter what we vote. Everybody knows that."

"Why do you have to vote for those candidates? Why not vote for whoever you think is best instead of letting someone else choose?" The teacher's voice had risen, becoming more agitated. "You, Mr. Stark, do you agree with your classmates?"

"Yeah. I guess so. Why bother voting? I'm not rich, so I'm not important. Politicians don't care what I think, so nothing I'd do would matter."

The teacher's head sagged for a moment, and he spoke softer, so the students had to strain to hear. "If you truly believe that, it has a way of coming true. If you do not try, you can never succeed. No one can take your right to vote away, but you can give it away." When he looked up again, his eyes had been glistening with something Stark and his classmates had been shocked to realize were unshed tears. "You are citizens of the United States of America. What you think and what you do are important! Every one of you can make a difference if you just work at it!"

Neither Stark nor any of his classmates had believed a word of it, of course, sitting silent as the teacher left the room. He'd been back the next day, reading from his display once again, his face and voice a little duller than before.