Stark's Command (28 page)

Vic nodded in agreement. "I hope you can manage that without watching a lot of them die," she noted quietly.

"I hope so, too. Sergeant Reynolds. I can't believe we're facing such threats over such issues. Do you think the people we just met with will have second thoughts and grant any of our demands?"

She smiled crookedly before replying. "Mr. Campbell, I think we're dealing with individuals who think they can make things happen because they want them to happen. Right and wrong has nothing to do with it. They're not going to calmly accept a requirement to do what we want."

"What do you think they'll do? Surely not an all-out attack."

"Your guess is as good as mine." Vic gestured to Stark. "Ethan, you know the civ side and the mil side. What's your assessment?"

"They'll try something." Stark stared around as if that "something" would be identified somewhere in the vainglorious art on the walls. "But they've gotta be worried. How much will all this cost them? Corporations only care about the bottom line, right? And the politicians must be wondering who's gonna get blamed for everything, especially if whatever they try fails. The mil? No, I mean the Pentagon. They're worried most of all. They've lost damn near two-thirds of their active duty strength, one-third when they tried to use Third Division as a battering ram and one-third when we told them to go to hell. They don't have the troops to do the things they've said they'll do, and all the public relations spin in the world can't get them out of that hole."

Campbell smiled with evident relief. "Then they're not likely to actually attack us? It's just a bluff?"

Both Stark and Reynolds shook their heads in negation. "You can't count on that," Vic advised. "They don't want to lose. They don't have enough soldiers and no likelihood of getting enough soldiers. But not attacking us guarantees losing, while if they actually try to hit us a miracle might happen."

"And," Stark added, "you can bet their senior intelligence types are churning out reports saying whatever the brass wants to hear the most, which is probably that we're likely to crumble when they push."

"But, that won't happen," Campbell objected anxiously. "Will it?"

"I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Campbell. I don't know what'll happen the first time my soldiers find themselves aiming at other American soldiers. I don't know what the other soldiers will do. I don't know what my soldiers will do. I hope to God I never find out because, whether they shoot or surrender, either way I'm gonna lose."

Campbell stared at the floor for a long moment, then looked up with a sardonic smile. "So it appears we're hoping for a miracle, too."

"Yeah. I guess so. Reckon we'll find out which side's in best with the Big Guy upstairs, won't we?"

"Mail call," Bev Manley announced, tossing a data coin onto Stark's desk.

"What?" Stark tapped the coin with one finger as if unsure of its existence. "We got mail?"

"Uh-huh. That official delegation brought it."

Stark frowned, rolling the coin back and forth. "That'd be our first real mail since Meecham's offensive, not counting the stuff that's been bootlegged up here. Why'd the authorities decide to be so nice to us?"

"Because they ain't being nice." Sergeant Manley pointed at the coin in Stark's hand. "Think about it. People we don't trust hand us letters allegedly from our friends and loved ones back home. Because they want to be nice all of a sudden? No way. It's because whatever messages are in that coin and every other one we got says whatever the authorities want them to say. I'd guess major league propaganda, heartfelt appeals to surrender, that sort of thing."

"Bev, my parents may not be the greatest human beings on Earth, though God knows I put 'em through enough to earn martyr status for both of 'em, but they wouldn't parrot some government line to me."

Manley shook her head, waving an objecting hand. "This has nothing to do with your parents' virtues. It has to do with the government's ability to coerce people into doing what they want."

"You saying they put a gun to my parents' heads or something?"

"I doubt it'd be that crude. More likely they told your parents read this script for us or we'll have to ask the Internal Revenue Service to audit your last twenty years of tax returns for any discrepancies.' You know, iron-hand-in-the-velvet-glove stuff. What are they gonna do? And if that coin's from a friend instead of your parents, the same thing applies. Listen, I'm gonna give you the same advice I'm giving every soldier who got mail: don't read it. If the government wants you to have it, you don't want to know what it says."

Stark sat silent for a moment, then nodded. "Can't argue with that."

"Want to give me the coin back?"

"No."

Manley smiled ruefully. "Didn't think so. Just be careful. Don't read it. If you do read it, don't believe it."

"Thanks, Bev. That's good advice. We get mail for a lot of guys?"

She shrugged. "Coupla hundred. Not much, not with thousands of soldiers up here, which is one more reason I'm sure the stuff is faked. If people were allowed to write whatever they wanted, we'd have thousands of letters. But it takes time and personnel to supervise scripted dialogues, doesn't it?"

"Should we be handing this stuff out then?"

"I wondered about that. But that'd mean keeping mail away from soldiers it's addressed to. If you want me to . . ."

"No. We don't hold mail." Stark glanced down at the coin again. "That'd be wrong. Like lying to them. I don't want to start down the road of thinking I can mess with these apes' personal lives just because I think it's for their own good. You do like you said, warn everybody that this stuff is likely poison, and tell them to talk to their superiors and friends and the chaplains if they need to after screening it. But we don't withhold mail."

"Thought you'd say that." Manley flipped a casual salute. "I'm off on my assigned mission, then. Commander Stark."

"Does that mean I got to order around an Administrative guy? Maybe this job ain't so bad after all."

"Just don't let it go to your head." Manley smiled and left, leaving Stark alone with his mail.

Stark rolled the coin back and forth in his hand.
Yeah, it'd be real stupid to look at it. Just like Bev said. But I have to.
He leaned forward far enough to insert the coin in his palmtop, then watched the screen, trying to lock down his emotions as the still-familiar faces of his parents appeared. They were seated in what was surely the same apartment they'd lived in during Stark's youth, in a fairly anonymous suburb of the Seattle metroplex. Stark even recognized a few of the furnishings, though the couch on which his parents were seated looked new. His father looked like he had in the last coin Stark had received, older and thinner than the vision still stuck in his mind from his youth. His mother sat rigidly erect, surprisingly aged to Stark, who hadn't seen her image in over a decade, her face rigid with some unreadable emotion.

"Ethan Stark," his father began, the words falling heavily from his mouth, tinged with something like anger. "This is very unpleasant for us. We know what's happened up on the Moon. We know what you've done, and we are deeply, deeply ashamed." He paused, while Stark's mother remained uncharacteristically silent. "If you love us, if you care about us at all, if you have any decency, you'll surrender immediately to legal and lawful authorities. There's nothing else we can say. Please, do what's right." The screen blanked, leaving Stark to stare bleakly at white noise.

Is that really how they feel? Were they coerced into saying that? How can I know one way or another?
He thought of his father, firmly admonishing him, so different from the halting pride expressed in his last letter.
Did you mean it then or do you mean it now? Or both? Couldn't you have given me some sign? Some indication if this is how you really felt?
But his father had never been one for signs or subtlety. Like his universal gesture of contempt, the one Stark had seen a million times as a youth. His father would be watching the vid as some politician pontificated or some corporate ad rolled, and after a short time he'd throw down whatever he happened to be holding (or whatever was within reach) and declare "this is a bunch of crap." It had been one certain routine no matter the time of day or year. Political ad: "this is a bunch of crap" (wham). Smiling corporate speaker: "this is a bunch of crap" (wham). Earnest government representative: "this is a bunch of crap" (wham). Stark smiled involuntarily at the memory, then frowned thoughtfully.

Rewinding the coin, he watched carefully as his father spoke. "We know what you've done, and we are deeply, deeply ashamed." As the sentence ended, his father slapped down a bookpad on the table beside him. "If you love us, if you care about us at all, if you have any decency, you'll surrender immediately to legal and lawful authorities." The empty hand reached out as his father spoke, as if grabbing air, and making another throwing down gesture as if to emphasize the end of the sentence.

Stark rewound again. "Deeply, deeply ashamed." Wham. "Surrender immediately." Simulated wham. He watched the last two sentences carefully. "There's nothing else we can say." That could be read two ways, and Stark had a strong suspicion he now knew which one actually applied. "Please, do what's right." That, too. The government people who'd obviously supervised the making of this tape had no doubt believed that was pretty unambiguous, and it was, just not in the way they expected. Stark's father had all his life made it clear where he thought "right" lay, and that usually wasn't on the side of either big corporations seeking bigger profits or politicians in their pay.

He watched the tape one more time, focusing this time on his mother, sitting silently through his father's speech. That wasn't normal, either, not unless she'd changed a whole lot.
Mom always made it clear that even when she agreed with Dad, she wasn't going to let him do all the talking. So when she says nothing, that sends a message, too.

Why you sneaky little devils. Never knew you could put one over on the government. The guys screening this coin probably thought Dad's throwing things emphasized his words real nice and figured Mom's silence was natural.
Stark grinned, imagining the dialogue in his father's head as he'd spoken words he didn't believe: "this is a bunch of crap!" And his mother holding her tongue despite what must have been a powerful urge to say the same thing out loud.
How come we learn so much about our parents so late in life? Maybe we've got to get enough life under our own belts first to understand what we've always taken for granted. Do what's right. That's the bottom line. Okay. Got the message.

"Ethan, time to meet with the officers."

Stark looked up from his work, blinking in confusion as his mind tried to surface through a haze of concentration and focus back into the real world.
Officers? Did the Company Commander call a meeting? No, wait. Wake up, Stark. They're gone. The delegation from the Pentagon? They left days ago.
"Officers? What officers?"

"Hellooooo, Ethan." Vic leaned down to peer into his eyes. "You are not getting enough sleep, soldier."

"Do tell. What officers?"

"The ones who volunteered to stay."

Oh, yeah. Those officers.
"How many did we end up keeping?" That report had probably crossed his desk at some point, but Stark couldn't sort out that memory from a hundred others.
Too many damn reports. It's like the brass ordered reports on everything they could possibly order reports on. Gotta fix that.

"Sixteen." Vic smiled encouragingly. "One of them is Conroy."

"Great." Stark stood, feeling muscles twinge as he stretched. "I gotta move more."

"You getting your resistance workouts in every day?"

"Mostly."

"Uh-huh. I'll see you this afternoon, and we'll work out together. Okay?"

"Thanks." Stark checked his scheduler, nodding approvingly. "That'll leave time for me to get prettied up for the dinner with my Squad."

"Don't get too pretty or your Squad won't recognize you."

"Har, har. When's the last time I told you how funny you were, Reynolds?"

"It's been a couple of days."

"Good. I'll make sure it's a couple more before I tell you again."

Vic smiled, then took another close look at Stark. "What's the matter? You look nervous. Don't worry, I'm sure that dinner'll happen on schedule this time, unless the Navy screws it up again."

"That's not what I'm nervous about. It's the officers who've joined us. Vic, I never faced a bunch of officers like this before. Giving 'em marching orders, instead of them ordering me around. It's kinda . . . weird. You know?"

Instead of agreeing, she laughed. "Ethan, you've been telling officers what to do for as long as I've known you."

Her humor brought a self-mocking smile to Stark's face. "Well, yeah, but that was different. I was, whatayacallit, manipulating them to do the right thing. I wasn't coming right out and saying 'do this.' I couldn't."

Vic smiled reassuringly, reaching to pat his upper arm. "You've been doing fine giving orders. If these officers weren't ready to take them from you, they wouldn't be here."

"I guess that's right. Okay. Let's go."

The officers awaited Stark in a modestly sized room, one usually reserved for presentations or lectures to small units. Stark kept his eyes set straight ahead as he entered the room, then cursed mentally as Reynolds yelled "Attention!" behind him, bringing the officers to their feet.
She should've warned me she was gonna do that. But then if she had warned me, I'd have told her not to, so of course she didn't tell me.

Reaching the front of the room, Stark turned, finally having to face the officers. Five Captains and eleven Lieutenants. Very few, counted against all the officers who had been assigned to Lunar Command, but a very large number compared to whatever amount of officers Stark would have guessed would volunteer to join a revolt against their fellows. He waited a moment longer, both Stark and the officers at attention, before realizing it was his responsibility to break the stalemate. "Uh, please, take your seats."