Stark's Command (7 page)

He shied away from the implications. "I know. We'll have to figure out how to fill the gap."

"Heck, I can use my tanks as mobile bunkers. Rotate a half-squadron at a time up right behind the front, keep 'em moving behind screening terrain so the enemy can't pinpoint 'em. Good practice for us, and it'll make anybody think twice about trying to annoy us around here again. That is," Lamont added, "if that's what you tell me to do with the armor."

"Lamont,
you
tell
me
how to use armor. How come I haven't seen you armor apes do that kind of thing before?"

"Because anytime you take one of these tanks out of the storage hangar there's a chance it'll get hurt, and they're so blasted expensive no general ever wanted to let them out of the hangar. Let me tell you, I'm pretty tired of only driving these things in simulators."

Stark nodded, unseen by Lamont. "Those tin cans'll see plenty of action, now. Work out your plan and just shoot a copy to Reynolds and me."

"You're the boss. See you in the Out-City."

"Yeah." Stark shook his head, eyes suddenly blurring so the symbology on his HUD fuzzed into unreadable blobs. "Vic?"

"Here."

"What's happening out there? Is everything else okay?"

"Check your command scan."

"I . . . can't. Look, just tell me. We got things fixed here, right? Any problems anywhere else on the perimeter?"

"No, Ethan. No problems. When the other enemy sectors saw how hard we hit back, they pulled their own forces out of contact. Relax."

"Thanks." Stark started trembling, first his arms, then his legs, shaking so badly he couldn't stand and had to kneel, then lie on the rough lunar rock, eyes looking past the symbology on his HUD to the empty black sky beyond. After awhile, the cold began to seep through his suit's insulation, but he lay still except for the tremors running through his body. The stars swung slowly overhead, scattered points of light blessedly free of meaning, indifferent to the woes humans inflicted on one another.

"Commander?" The voice had some vague familiarity. Stark shifted his head slightly, seeing for the first time the bulk of an APC looming nearby, its curved armored shell black-on-black against the rocks rising behind it. "Sergeant Reynolds sent me to bring you back to headquarters. Commander?"

That command-configured APC. Forgot about it.
"Yeah." He struggled to rise, submitting finally to aid from the driver as his stiff joints refused to cooperate. Inside the APC, he strapped in, looking past the status displays as the vehicle rose and swung around on to a course back to headquarters. This time, its speed didn't really matter.

Stark walked slowly through the headquarters complex, unaware of those around him, until he reached the room he'd chosen for his own living quarters. It had belonged to a Colonel once, which made it large enough to cause Stark some embarrassment, but it had quickly become apparent that he needed that room to handle the work his new responsibilities had brought. Now, though, he ignored the work reminders blinking on the desk, palmed off the lights, and sat silently in the dim illumination of the room's nightlight.

Sometime later, Vic pulled the door open, letting a shaft of light from the hall lance into the room. "Hey, Ethan."

"Hey."

She leaned against the door frame, arms crossed. "What're you doing?"

"Trying not to think."

"Jeez. One battle in command, and you're already trying to act like a General." When Stark didn't rise to the joke, she shook her head, then extended a hand. "Come on. We're going for a walk."

"Why? What good will a walk do?"

"A helluva lot more good than sitting in a dark room. Let's go, soldier."

Stark stood reluctantly, yielding to the pressure as Vic steered him out of the headquarters complex, along corridors whose rock walls grew less finished and whose width shrank as they approached the Out-City. The bars and corridors were filled with soldiers celebrating with the curious joy of those who have stared death in the face, yet somehow come away living once again. Amid the larger groups, small clusters of more sober men and women marked those discussing the loss of friends and relatives. How, when, and where. Knowing those things didn't help the dead in the least, but they meant a great deal to those left behind.

"Who are these apes?" Stark wondered.

"Fifth Battalion," Vic replied, "and the units that broke on the front. I pulled them off the line and left Fourth Battalion to cover the area for a little while."

"Good idea." These soldiers might look happy, but he could feel their brittleness, the fragile equilibrium under their surface gaiety. "Milheim did a good job."

"Sure did. Got a real solid outfit, there, and a real solid commander."

"Glad they're holding the line right now." A deep breath. "Any casualty count, yet?"

Reynolds twisted her mouth. "Things are pretty confused, but we ran a system inventory and came up with about a hundred dead. Wounded? God only knows. It'll take us days to sort that out."

"A hundred dead."

"About. Hundred and fifty, max. Ethan, most of those died running. We could tell by where their bodies are lying."

"That's the way it usually works." They'd kept moving as they talked, and as he walked past some of the soldiers recognized Stark, grinning as they brought right hands up in sharp salutes. "We kicked butt!" one called, to a chorus of agreement from nearby listeners.

Good morale,
Stark realized with surprise.
They survived, we won, and the butcher's bill wasn't too bad. Pretty damn small, truth be told. One will always be too many, but at least I kept the casualties down.
"Maybe I didn't do too bad, after all," he muttered under his breath.

"You did real good, Ethan," Vic stated.

"How the hell did you hear that?"

"I didn't. I read your mind."

"I always figured you could do that." Stark shook his head, slowly smiling. "Okay. I did okay. Could have been better. There's a whole lot of stuff we gotta work out before another battle like this happens. Coordination. Getting a lot of the detail off those damned headquarters displays. Setting up people to support you and me when too much is happening at once." His smile faded into a frown as he caught sight of one soldier slumped against a corridor wall, face reflecting some internal wound. Stark veered to come face-to-face with the man. "What's up, soldier?"

"Huh?" The question had obviously shocked the soldier out of an internal reverie, and now his expression screwed up in total misery. "Stark. Sir. Damn it all. I let you down."

"You
let me down? Just how did that happen?"

"I ran." The two words seem to choke in the soldier's throat. "I ran away. My unit broke, maybe because I ran."

Vic moved forward, face concerned, but Stark waved her back. "How far? How far did you run?"

"I . . . I dunno. As far as that ridge."

"The ridge. The one where I was? The one we held, and then hit back on?"

A flash of pride broke through the pain. "Yessir. That one."

"Let me tell you something, soldier." The man braced himself in obvious expectation of a severe tongue lashing at best and arrest at worst. "If I'd seen you running on the field I might have shot you to stop you, because I have to worry about a lot of people and sometimes that's the only way to get their attention. Yeah, it's bad you ran. Real bad. But you stopped. That counts, too. You stopped, you fought. That means you've still got the makings of a good soldier."

"It's okay?" The man obviously didn't believe it.

"No, it's not okay," Stark snapped. "You let me down, you let down all the other soldiers in this unit, and most importantly you let down the soldiers on either side of you who depended on you to guard their flanks. Don't do it again. Ever. Or I'll make you regret the day you put on a uniform."

"I won't. I swear."

"Good, because the enemy gives me enough to worry about. You apes are too damn good to let me down. You're too damn good to let your friends down."

"Yessir. You don't have to worry about me." Still unhappy, but determined as well, now.

"Good. I won't forget you. Carry on." The soldier saluted stiffly, standing rigid as Stark and Reynolds walked on.

"You're mellowing," Vic remarked.

"Am not." Stark glared at her. "Didn't I sound mad enough? 'Cause I sure as hell was mad."

"Right now, that soldier's a lot more afraid of you than he'll ever be of the enemy," Vic assured him. "But he confessed to running, Ethan. That's a court-martial offense."

"I know that." He scowled down the corridor. "A lot of people ran. I can't court-martial them all. Don't want to. That'd do more damage than their running did. Rip outfits apart. No. The shame, knowing they let everybody down, that'll make 'em fight better next time. They'll want to prove themselves."

She nodded judiciously. "The Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn't leave a lot of room for discretion, but you were never big on the letter of the law, were you?"

"Vic, the letter of the law is for people who don't have enough sense to know what's right unless it's spelled out for them. I am not going to lead these people at the point of a bayonet. They'll follow me because they want to, or I'm doing something wrong."

"Not a bad philosophy." She chewed her lower lip, gazing upward at the rough steel-and-rock ceiling over the corridor. "So, you told me during the battle you had some idea why they started running in the first place."

"I think so, yeah."

"Care to enlighten poor ignorant me?"

"Let's get a beer, first." Stark veered again, heading into one of the literally hole-in-the-wall establishments to grab two beers. Waving off a small group of soldiers who tried to surrender their seats at the only table in the tiny bar, he led Vic outside again, leaning against the rough rock wall, oblivious to the cold, which somehow managed to seep into the stone no matter how well insulated or how warm humans made their living areas.

Stark took a long, slow drink, pausing to order his thoughts. "You want to know why they ran? Because they didn't have a good reason to fight. They haven't figured out their cause, yet, Vic. They don't know what they're fighting for."

"Hmmm." Vic pondered the statement, taking a drink of her own beer. "You'd think they'd fight to save themselves."

"Sure. But saving your skin is a lousy combat motivator. That's why mercs make rotten soldiers, right? They're fighting to stay alive and draw their pay checks."

"Yeah." It was Vic's turn to scowl, though she aimed the gesture at her beer. "This stuff really sucks. Ethan, you and I and any veteran knows the best way to get yourself killed in combat is to start running."

"But that's just it! It doesn't make any sense. It's crazy. The way to stay alive is to stay in combat? No, every instinct we've got says to stay alive you run away from danger. You've gotta have a reason to override those instincts."

"Good point." She looked down at her beer again. "I'm empty. You should've gotten more than two."

"I thought you said it sucked."

"It does. But it's still beer."

"Anyway," Stark continued, "we've spent our lives fighting for . . . what? The U.S. of A.? Protecting our families? The Constitution? Or just plain trying to do the right thing in a world full of wrong things. So which of those still apply? Right here, right now?"

Vic rubbed the tip of her nose with one forefinger as she thought. "Doing right," she finally concluded.

"I sure hope so. But you had to think, didn't you?"

"Sure did." Vic stared outward, eyes fixed somewhere and somewhen else. "The only way to handle combat is to not think about things, like how maybe you're going to die at any moment, but if you don't have much of a clue why you're fighting in the first place I guess people can't stop from thinking."

"Maybe." Stark snorted in sudden derision. "That'd fit. The only people who can't handle the mil are the ones who can't stop thinking."

"So, what are you thinking right now?"

He looked around, taking in the troops filling the corridor and the cramped bars that lined it. "I'm thinking we got off lucky. That battle was too damn close to lost. How can we know the same won't happen again next time somebody pushes us hard?"

She laughed. "Ethan, you gave them a reason to fight that'll be good enough until we come up with some others. Okay, two reasons."

"And those are?"

"You. And one another."

"Me?" Stark stared in disbelief. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"People need heroes and leaders, Ethan. You're both. Think about it. Think how you held things together when the other sections of the line started getting real nervous. You told them they were letting you down."

"That's not what I said. Was it?"

"Maybe not exactly, but it was the general idea. And they didn't want to let you down because you've never let them down. Whenever things start to fall apart, Stark is there, holding the line, looking out for everybody. You can't ask for much more in a commander."

"Yeah. Right." Stark looked away, but every direction held soldiers offering smiles and salutes. "How about a commander who knows what the hell he's doing?"

Vic grinned. "Hell's belles, Ethan, we've
never
had one of those."

"I've let a lot of people down, Vic. They're dead, and I was responsible for them."

"You can't take the blame for those guys running—"

"I didn't mean them. I meant the people in my Squad. God, how many have died? I can still see them all."

Her smile vanished as she stared down at her empty beer. "We've all got those kinds of ghosts, Ethan. Some more than others. If you never wanted anyone who worked for you to die, you're in the wrong line of work."

"I guess. Damn strange way to make a living." He crumpled his beer, tossing the empty container into a nearby recycling bin. "Which reminds me. There's something I gotta do."

"Okay," she agreed as he began to go. "Ethan?"

"Yeah."

"You did a good job. Don't torture yourself because it wasn't perfect." One corner of Vic's mouth twisted upward. "Who am I kidding? I'm telling Ethan Stark not to sweat the fact he's not perfect? Why don't I just tell the Moon to grow an atmosphere?"