Stark's War (7 page)

"Families?" Gomez wondered.

"Probably. Already or soon."

"So they maybe going to build a fort up here, too? Maybe have mil families around?"

"Maybe." Stark kept his response cautiously positive. He wouldn't dismiss the question out of hand, because having those families within reach, having a mil community within reach, would be very important to a lot of soldiers. "Too early to tell. I guess they'll get the civs settled in before they think about bringing mil families up."

"Any bars yet?" Billings asked eagerly.

"None that I've heard of," Stark stated. "And any that do exist are probably unofficial and illegal right now." That wouldn't last, he knew, not if the mil stayed up here. Stark had long since stopped being amazed by the many means people could find to manufacture booze or drugs out of any available materials. Somehow, some way, those who preyed on the needs of soldiers would set up shop to happily assist those soldiers in spending every dollar they could shell out. It was always that way, probably always had been that way, and probably always would be that way. "If any of you happen to visit that colony, you stay away from the civs, just like usual. That keeps them happy and you out of trouble."

"Speaking of civs, you know what?" Chen stated, drawing attention. "I heard from my folks yesterday. Back home the civs watched our attack here on the vid. Almost real time."

Stark stood silent, not willing to compromise the information he'd received from Reynolds and the command circuit during the assault.

"You're kidding," Carter replied. "You don't mean the news programs, do you?"

"No," Chen denied, shaking his head for emphasis. "It was special programs. Just a little time delay, and they showed us going through objectives and everything. Except when commercials ran."

"They made our attack a program?" Gomez spat. "With commercials?"

"That's not the worst," Chen added, reveling in the attention. "You know the guys in Second Division? The ones who are still committed all over the place back home? They're showing them, too. In battles and stuff. Soldiers getting wounded, dying, the whole thing. My folks say everybody's watching the shows on the vid. Better than that new no-rules hockey, they said. I guess there's more blood on a mil vid."

"I'm gonna shoot the next public affairs officer I see," Gomez vowed.

"They gotta just be following orders," Billings objected. "But why would the brass make our operations into a vid show to entertain the civs? Sarge, why would they do that?"

"I don't know," Stark admitted. "There has to be some reason, but I don't know what it is."

Carter slammed one of her tools to the floor. "Great. Now I'm not only going to have a lot of officers staring over my shoulder while I fight, I'm also going to have about a hundred million civs waiting to see me get hurt."

"Don't mess up those tools or you'll get hurt right now," Stark snapped. "Look, you know what a battlefield is like. Every soldier's got their own vid feed going back to headquarters. So there's no way any civs can be vulturing every one of us on their vid at the same time. Most likely, you'll never personally make the vid. Happy?"

"Not me, Sergeant," Desoto cracked. "I want to be a vid star!" Everybody laughed this time.

"Good luck," Stark wished his Corporal. "The rest of you, get back to work troubleshooting your battle armor. There's no sense getting worked up right now over something we can't do anything about." Silence broken only by the clink and buzz of equipment reigned for a few minutes.

"Sarge?" Murphy looked up from his maintenance work, mouth set in the determined fashion that meant he'd been thinking.

"Yeah, Murph."

"I heard an ugly rumor, Sarge."

Gomez barked a short laugh. "I hope it ain't as ugly as you, Murph."

"No. I mean, yeah. Hey, just knock it off."

Stark sighed heavily. "Okay, Murphy, what's this rumor?"

"I heard," Murphy declared pretentiously, glancing around the room to see how his words were received, "that they've run out of spares for the suits."

"Really?" Chen teased, hoisting a replacement rebreather cartridge in one hand. The genetically tailored living cells inside were amazingly efficient at converting carbon dioxide back into oxygen as long as you fed them current, but those cells also had a nasty tendency to die if any other organic matter contaminated them. "Then where are we getting these parts from, Murph?"

"I heard they're cannibalizing suits from outfits that are off the line. That's what I heard."

Mendoza eyed Stark warily. "Is that true, Sergeant?"

Stark shrugged. "What if it is?"

"It means we don't have a reserve," Mendoza noted. "If we need reinforcements, there won't be any."

Everyone watched Stark, trying to gauge his reaction to Murphy's and Mendoza's statements. He took a deep breath, choosing the right words. "I heard the same thing. So what? If you apes get in a firefight, who's the only person you can absolutely count on to look out for you? Yourself. After that, you can count on the other guys in this Squad. Don't forget that, and don't go into battle depending on someone else to save your ass because you're
never
sure that someone else will be there when you need 'em."

About half the Squad nodded back, reassured by the words, but the others still looked doubtful. "Sarge," Murphy noted, "sometimes everything goes to hell and you need help. It's kinda scary to know help can't come."

Help can't come.
Stark fought down a shiver at the words, savagely tamping down memories he didn't care to confront. A vision of grass flecked with red specks of blood momentarily came between his eyes and the soldiers watching him. "Sometimes . . ." Stark began, then choked off the words while his Squad looked puzzled.

"Okay," Stark declared in a harsher tone than he'd intended, drawing some more puzzled looks. "I could minimize all this, and make you all feel good. Or I can lay it out as bad as it is and make sure you apes are ready for the worst. Guess what I'm going to do?" Stark strode over to the vid panel on one wall, triggering it and calling up a sector map with American unit positions overlaid. "The situation sucks. See this? It's everything we hold right now. Mendoza, you're so smart, what d'you see?"

Mendoza gulped, obviously uncomfortable at the attention, then studied the picture intently. "Our forces are highly dispersed, Sergeant."

"Very good. Now put that in terms Murphy can understand."

"Yes, Sergeant." Mendoza raised a finger, pointing around the display. "Our units are spread out, a squad here, a platoon there. We're occupying a very large area for the number of personnel we have."

"Uh-huh." Stark glared at his troops, stabbing his own index finger at them for emphasis. "You know what that means? If everything goes to hell, if those foreigners we tossed out of here come back to fight for it all, it's going to be everyone for themselves at first. No one's going to have any support, from the rear or from the right or the left or anywhere else." Faces eyed the map grimly, years of combat experience measuring the situation and not liking the result. "So reserves don't matter. What matters is the grunt beside you. We hold, or we fall back, or if those idiots at headquarters order it we advance, but we do it on our own."

"What if we can't?" Billings whispered. "What if the odds are too bad?"

Stark glowered, putting everything he had into his performance. He had to convince his troops, had to keep their confidence in themselves, or he'd be letting them down as surely as if he let their equipment rust into uselessness. He also had to convince himself. Winning might require a lot of different things, but losing could be as simple as going in believing you were going to lose. "Not an option. There're no odds too bad for you apes. Period. So if everything else falls apart, you guys hold together. Understand? I won't accept anything less from you."

"Si, Sargento"
Gomez agreed in the silence following Stark's words, a fierce grin illuminating her face. "We'll kick butt."

Stark grinned back, feeling his Squad's morale shoot upward again. "Damn straight you will." He pointed at the suits laid out for maintenance. "Now get that battle armor up to one hundred percent across the board. I want us ready for anything."

Time passed and eventually their chronometers said night, even though the lifeless rocks and dust were painted with the same harsh light and black shadow. Stark brooded over the view, alone now in the darkened cafeteria, a feeling of oppressive threat hanging over him.
Hope it's just nerves from living in this hole. We haven't received any warning of attack so far, but then the civs we took this place from didn't get any warning either. Lord, I don't want to buy a grave up here. If it all ends for me I want one somewhere less ugly. But above all, Lord, keep these apes of mine as safe as you can.

"Sergeant?" Desoto stood nearby. "You about to turn in?"

"Yeah."

"Something bothering you? If anybody in the Squad needs straightening out—"

Stark shook his head, forcing a smile. "No, Pablo. The Squad's fine."

"I know Murphy's been a little harder to herd than usual these days. I'm going to have a talk with him."

"That's fine. Never hurts to put the fear of God in Murphy."

Desoto visibly hesitated. "You're not thinking of transferring Murphy out, are you, Sergeant?"

Stark's head shook again, firmly this time. "No. Murphy may not be the brightest star in the heavens, and he'll screw off any time he gets the chance, but if he knows it's expected of him he'll always be there when he's needed and he'll do a good job."

"He's a lot of work, though."

"Sure he's a lot of work. But if I sent him to some other outfit he might get a Sergeant who'd let Murphy slack off until it killed him. Murphy's my responsibility."

"Verdad."
Desoto nodded in agreement. "You met his parents once, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Stark recalled. "Back in the States somewhere. Nice folks. But that's not the point. He's my responsibility because he's mine. He's in my Squad. I send him off somewhere else, he's still my responsibility, because I sent him there. That's just the way it is."

"A lot of people don't see things that way. Officers sure as hell don't."

"Well, they gotta live with themselves, and I gotta live with me." Stark exhaled, long and soft. "Right now, I'm just trying to relax. Got a bad feeling about things right now."

"Something coming down?"

"Not that I know of. Just nerves, I guess."

Desoto grimaced. "I know. It gets old after a while, doesn't it, Sergeant? That stuff about cannibalizing battle armor is bad news. One more mission on a shoestring, one more try at surviving without enough ammo or spares. God bless our leaders," he added irreverently.

"Don't forget whichever corporations plan on taking over all this stuff we grabbed for them. Oughta make them a lot of money."

"Yeah. Seems like all we ever do is go places to help rich people get richer. Did the mil always do that, Sergeant?"

Stark shook his head. "I don't know. Doesn't seem to have a lot to do with upholding and defending the Constitution like the oath says, does it? Go ask Mendoza." He pondered for a moment, then nodded. "Wait a minute. Mendo did say something about that once. The outfit was headed for some objective in the Pacific, and Mendo talked about how Hawaii used to be its own country."

"Hawaii? A country?"

"Yeah, only these American business types wanted it, so we went in and took it over for them."

Desoto looked puzzled. "When did this happen, Sergeant? Hawaii's been a state, like, forever."

"I don't remember. Long time ago, I guess."

"So why didn't we grab more stuff back then?" Desoto wondered. "You know, Korea or something."

"Somebody asked Mendo about that, and he said there was these other powers who wouldn't let us. Countries just as strong as us."

"Man, that was a long time ago. Not like now. Only superpower for what, a century?"

"Something like that. Ask Mendo."

"And nobody else can stop us when we really want something," Desoto continued, "so we've got everything we really want on Earth, and now we're taking the Moon, too. Guess the rest of the countries just got to roll over for that."

"Maybe. Maybe they'll just roll. But I tell you, Pablo, you back somebody into a corner and they might give up, or they might fight back real hard."

"You think they're going to fight, Sergeant?"

"Yeah. I think they're going to fight. I would." Stark eyed the impossibly barren landscape on the vid monitor, a landscape that already seemed to have been fought over for eternity by armies bigger than any humanity had ever mustered. "I hate this damn place, but I would."

"Wish the big bosses had to be here when the shooting started."

Stark laughed, the sound short and bitter. "That would be nice, wouldn't it? Too bad we can't swap places with them all next time it gets really hot."

"Sergeant, how come officers rotate in and out of assignments every six months? They never have time to learn their jobs. It'd be a lot easier on us if they led us better, but even the ones who seem okay—some of the junior officers, that is—they don't ever learn enough to be much good."

Stark held up three fingers. "Three reasons. One, there're too many officers for the number of grunts in the mil. They gotta keep them moving so it looks like they need them all." One finger came down. "Two, to get promoted, officers need to check off a bunch of jobs somebody decided were really nice to have. Only problem is, there're too many jobs on the list. So to get all the good jobs on their records, the officers can only stay in one job for a little while." Another finger dropped. "Finally, because an officer usually gets a medal at the end of a tour. The more jobs they hold, the more medals they get." The last finger fell.

Desoto screwed up his mouth in distaste. "I guess I should have known I wouldn't like the answer to that question."

"Then why'd you ask it?"

"To find out. Isn't that how you found out?"

"Yeah. Sergeant Reynolds drilled it into my head one day."