The Question
Eternal
SCOUTING AHEAD
By the time Connelly popped up the hand-signal for “Enemy Ahead”, we’d already been feeling it in the air for five full minutes. It was that sense you get when things don’t add up – a sense of foreboding, knowing that something’s just over the next hill, and though you can’t conjure just what that thing is, you know you won’t like it none, ‘cause odds are it don’t like you.
It was toward the end of the war – I reckon maybe a week, maybe two, before Serenity Valley out on Hera. So maybe a month before the whole gorram thing was over and done with and the Alliance sewed it all up, signed the papers, wrote the wit for all the show-trials and took the core planets home in a pretty basket.
But I guess that’s gettin’ ahead of matters. And anyway, this ain’t about the Independents, or the Alliance… or even the war, so much. This is about a girl.
Funny, ain’t it? In the middle of all that chaos and fire and blood and screamin’, sometimes things just kinda clear up and let you see straight. Things you see come times like that, those are things you might not see any time else. Things a man really oughta see.
Well. Back to the story. Connelly pops the signal, and we all get just a little more friendly with the tall grass we were cuttin’ through after leaving the treeline behind us.
Well, we was still green, we didn’t know no better than to go slippin’ through the veggies – figured walkin’ hard dirt would give their skiffs a nice eagle-eye thermal view of our FNG skins.
Maybe a couple more days in training, we’d’ve known it works just exactly the opposite way. Their skiffs didn’t have thermal, most of ‘em. Just good long-range motion-disturbance detection, bit like the shark-fish back on Earth-That-Was.
They spotted the displacement of the pattern the grass made all by its lonesome – we were leavin’ wakes, like sea-ships on the water. We were ruttin’ new and stupid, is what. Got ‘em killed. I can still hear the screams some deep, cold midnights.
That’s what’s wrong with bunkin’ down with a bottle and a recollection. Well, again – here I am off the track of the story. Your forgiveness; old age does stalk the mind some. Let’s see, now…
Connelly’s arm went up, palm up, fingers out. Our stances dropped a little lower, and our heads began to move left-right, left-right. Wasn’t neither of Persephone’s brighter moons out that night – only Calisto, which don’t hardly cast no light anyhow during the summer months - and starlight to see by; so it was nice and cozy-dark without pulling down night-vision.
Which we couldn’t do, on account of the EMF signatures from the equipment would’ve put bulls-eyes on our backs, and orders were to make the approach dim and silent. So, no NVGs, no Cortex navs, nor even comms. We was all very prim, and that was proper.
Our greatest help that night was also our biggest harm – wasn’t but six of us to the squad. There was Private Xiu-Yan Connelly on point; behind him was Sergeant Ian Talmadge – yep, that’d be me – Private Sean “Hey” Yu. We called him ‘Hey’ on account of it wasn’t his fault his folks named him after that genocidal maniac Shan Yu.
Right beside Hey was Turkish Klein, and you ain’t never seen buddies like those two. Hey was maybe all five foot two and ninety pounds bone-soaked, and Turkish was a gorram giant, made even Connelly look like a runt, and Connelly’s six foot six and damn near three hundred pounds.
Back of the stack we called The Sisters, Sarah and Mouse. Sarah Ben David hauled the heavy iron for us, and for a little slip of a girl five foot six and one-thirty, she could haul off and hammer with that thing. I remember back at Du-Khang, we were pinned down by at least two dozen Alliance ground troops, Command told us they had rollers movin’ in and we had to get the hell out or lay down arms, those were our judgements. Well, she wedged that weapon into the open, she didn’t even hardly have no sights on ‘em, but when she let that fifteen-hundred-rounds-per-minute dog get to barkin’…
Sorry. Reckon I’m off track again. Or maybe it’s just thinkin’ on Mouse. I been doin’ that so much since she lit out for… wherever… Well, I guess it just stings a little talkin’ on her. Wish to hell she was here.
She was our medic. You as know her know she didn’t get the callsign “Mouse” by bein’ runtly. Them as don’t will want to know she was about my own size, five foot eleven, weighin’ about twenty pounds lighter than my own self, which put her right in the space of a hundred fifty, maybe a hundred sixty. That’s what a diet of mostly protein and carbs, pair that up with bein’ on the move and totin’ armor, weapons and supplies regular, that’s what it’ll do for a person.
No, she got nicked “Mouse” by bein’ the quiet one. You might look right at her, not see a ruttin’ thing. And that was a gift; it was a good thing. This night I’m relatin’, that was the very best kind of thing.
Well.
Connelly’s just thrown the signal, and we’re panning our eyes over the top of this ridge – just beyond that is a munitions dump, and that’s what we’re hitting tonight – but there’s nothing. No movement. So I give the signal for NVGs, hold up 3 fingers then count ‘em down so the squad knows they get exactly 3 full seconds to have a fluorescent look at the ridge.
I pull my own down, dial them out to fifty meters – quick look, not close enough – dial out to two hundred, another quick look – still no joy.
That’s when we heard the first shell whine down out of the sky and blast a smoking hole in sod the size of a man’s torso. Mortar.
Now, I give my people credit – fresh as they were, weren’t none of ‘em nervous in the service. First thing they did wasn’t yell or scatter or discredit themselves in their britches. First thing they did was drop and look to me.
First thing I did was look for trees. It took a click longer than I liked, but I found ‘em, just as the next shell came down screamin’. I raised up, waved ‘em after me, got into a serious variety of sprinting action.
The next one was close – I remember just having time to reckon they still had to zero us in, but they had real-time vid to do that from, so it wouldn’t take them long. As the flash faded, a shower of sod rattled on my helmet, and a scream went up from behind me. That one wasn’t incoming ordnance. That one was human, but only just.
I threw my eyes over my shoulder. I couldn’t tell who was moving and who was lying on the ground smoking. More than one of each, I could gauge that much.
“Keep moving! Go! Go! Go!” Those were my words, but I didn’t know I was giving the order when I did it. Another shell whistled down, five meters south of where I knelt down to see who we’d lost.
I laid my repeater away to the side, leaned over the smoking ruin of what was Turkish just a handful of seconds ago. He’d taken some loss – pretty much everything west of his belly button – but what wasn’t emptyin’ out his blood into the grass was too big to be anybody else. I recall that was the first time I’d ever wished a friend of mine was dead. I hope you don’t never ever get into a spot where you understand how a man could feel that way.
But Turkish wasn’t the only one we lost right that minute. I spotted Ben David’s heavy repeater away off, and I knew right as I saw it who that scream belonged to. It was tore up bad, and so was she. Not as bad as Turkish, but bad enough so that didn’t matter. Her shooting hand was probably off takin’ its ease in the tall grass somewhere. No point lookin’ for her fa… I don’t want to think on that sight no more.
It was then I saw Mouse. She hadn’t wasted time with Turkish, but she was leaned over Ben David, needle out, ready to dope her.
“Hell do you think you’re doing!” I didn’t see no point – we were a mile from the nearest field hospital, and the gorram Alliance sure as shit wasn’t going to patch up our wounded.
Mouse didn’t answer, just jammed that stick in Ben David’s good arm, gave her good shoulder a goodbye squeeze and pulled up running for the treeline.
That struck me a bit. She knew she couldn’t save Sarah; she didn’t dope her for any other thing but to let her slip away easy. That maybe is what made me fall in love with her more than the other thing she done that night.
Now I had myself a dilemma – there was no way to conjure how many of my squad were still whole and battle-ready, where they were or whether we were set up to start taking lead. Mind that Connelly had thrown up his signal – that meant he’d spotted something, but we hadn’t been able to confirm contact before the shelling started.
Another shell sirened down – closer to me this time, I gauged, for this time the flash and the crack of the explosion wasn’t just followed by debris that rained down on my helmet and armor. This time I caught a blast of hot air and my sight and hearing took a half-second to clear back to sharp. That’s what happens when you’re just out of reach of a shockwave, so I been told. I’d not known that bit of trivia, nor was I terribly fascinated over it that night.
I do recall it staggered me a bit, until a pair of strong arms caught hold of me and pulled me along until my senses got straightened out and I shook them off just as we reached the trees. I didn’t know that minute, either, who those arms belonged to.
We got in, ducked under branches, crashing through brush that tore at my fatigues, tried to lay anchor on my repeater, but I wasn’t having that. I guess it caught hold of one of the grenades on my belt, though, because I heard the snap of a pin being loosed, and found one of my own missing later on.
Whoever that grenade belonged to, though, it’s the reason I can’t never get athlete’s foot on my right foot no more.
I still hadn’t gotten around to seeing who it was just ahead of me – I had no cause to suspect right that second that it was Mouse, she’d been far up ahead when we were making our run for the trees – but when I heard that pin snap out of the ‘nade, I gave her a tackle and down we went. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t any too gentle doing it, but when the choice comes down to bustin’ a tooth on a tree root or losing a foot to anti-personnel shot-shrapnel, I reckoned she’d rather have the busted tooth.
So I got the shrapnel. Well, it don’t bother me none, except when the foot itches now and then, which the doctors swore this gorram prosthetic ain’t programmed to do.
We just lay there for a bit – not takin’ our ease-like, but mostly ‘cause we was both busy with our respective body parts screamin’ in our heads.
I rolled off her – almost tried to stand up, until I looked down and saw where all that pain was comin’ at me from. I figured right then that it wasn’t a good time for a nature hike. Well, that made me laugh some, which is what shock is for. I don’t see that shock does much of anything else.
She sat up and gave me the dirtiest kind of look about the same time the last of the mortar explosions flashed lightning and thunder at us through the trees. She spit some blood onto the tree root that had wronged her, then held one hand to her mouth and scrambled around for her medkit.
I still hadn’t got it through my head that the tangled mess of shredded nytaneon and shredded leather and shredded meat at the end of my leg wasn’t my foot no more, and by the time I had that straightened out, she’d taken a hold on my arm to give me a pop of painkiller. She told me later how I struggled quite a bit over that – I still wasn’t entirely back in my head yet.
I do remember how she wrapped the one arm around mine, though, put a touch of a death-grip on it, and finally got that needle in. The world dropped out from under me right about that time, and I took a vacation.
I came back to the world with the butt of my repeater under my hand and soft light filtering down through the green canopy of the forest – Dortmunder Forest, as it was named after the war. Now the name of the forest is probably much less interesting to you than was the puzzle of where the hell she and I were in it was to me.
Because we sure as shit weren’t anywhere near the edge of it – there was surely some news I’d missed out on while I’d been out. That shot she’d given me wasn’t completely done, that was sure. My stomach was leaping and my head was spinning, both thanks to the anaesthetic still at work, and I let loose the previous night’s field ration off to the side of us. I felt a might better after, but not much.
I guess that woke her – she stirred some, then yawned, then clenched her eyes shut against the pain of doing that. A little stream of tears made it past her eyelids, but to her credit she didn’t make a single unbecoming sound. Just sat up, fought the reflex to put her hand over what was left of that tooth – that just would’ve pained her more, I’ve learned – and gave my stump a look.
“I got the bleeding stopped.” She said. Her words were slurred a little bit, with her trying to talk around that tooth. “How’s the pain, sir?”
“Oh, it’s wonderful.” I guess it hurt enough again to make me somewhat snappy. “Best pain ever.” I checked my chrono, not wanting to see if there was hurt on her face. “How much downtime did you get?”
She shrugged. “Maybe four hours, sir. Maybe five. I couldn’t stay awake, I’m sorry.” She made a point of sorting the insides of her medkit, but I could feel she was making more of a point to not look at me.
“It’s shiny, Mouse. I’m pretty sure no Alliance killed us while we were sleepin’.”
“Glad to hear that, sir.”
I let her flip slide, on account of I gave her one first. “You feel to get movin’?” A thought occurred to me. “Which, how exactly did we manage that last night?”
“I…” she seemed embarrassed. “I carried you, sir.”
“Did you, now?” This seemed mightily unlikely to me that morning. Of course… well, I don’t know why. She was a grown woman of healthy size, and a soldier at that. I guess it was just my old-fashioned raising made me doubt it at first.
“Yes, sir.” She withdrew another pair of syrettes from her kit, giving herself one.
“What’s that?” I asked, concerned at the prospect of being carried through the trees and over uneven ground by a woman who wasn’t doped, let alone by one who was.
“It’s a local, sir, to quiet my tooth is all.” She took to a knee over me.
“I don’t need another shot.” I waved her away. “Not yet. I ain’t over the first one.”
“You’re on your second, sir.” She informed me, but capped the needle and put it back in its case and then into her kit anyway. “You let me know when it’s time.”
“Where are the others?” I noticed none of the rest of our squad were to be seen.
“No idea, sir.” She looked around again herself. “We lost Klein and Ben David to the first round of mortar. I found… I found what was left of Hey just as we made it into the trees. I haven’t seen any trace of Connelly.”
“Did you try fixing on him with the Cortex Nav?” I could see right away she hadn’t. She hadn’t been given the order. Good soldier. “Well, do it now.”
“Sir?”
“They obviously think we’re already dead, Mouse. Otherwise, we would be by now. Get on the Cortex and see if you get a fix on Connelly’s tag.”
“Yes, sir.” She drew her HHDT – we didn’t call Hand-Held Data Terminals “pods” back then – and read the screen for a second or two before she gave it a look about twice as mean as the one she’d given me for making her kiss that root.
“No sign of Connelly, sir, but we have to go.” She put the HHDT away and got up in a hurry. “We have to go right now.”
“Problem?” I asked, getting a good grip on the forestock of my repeater and slipping my arm through the strap of my gear bag as she got down on her knees with her back to me.
“A whole squad of problems, sir, about close enough to piss at us. And a skiff sitting on the next ridge ready to watch the whole thing.”
I still wasn’t cozy with the idea of letting her carry me – but I was more particular against the idea of getting shot. Or worse, captured. I put my arms around her neck, tucked my good leg around the front of hers, and sort of tucked my other up under myself, tried not to let the frayed end jostle against either her or me as the ground fell away and we started off through the rough.
Fifteen minutes out, maybe twenty, we heard them. Two men – kids, like us – talking at each other like it was a Sunday picnic. I tapped her collarbone with one hand, leaned forward to whisper in her ear:
“Set me down here, then flank left.”
Now, she was a medic. And – I hate to come across sexist – a woman medic, on that. I had no call to expect her to do what she did then. She didn’t argue. She didn’t fuss at all. She did just as I ordered, right then and there, smooth and quiet.
I slid down, rested my back to a tree, and by the time I looked up, she’d disappeared without a sound. I guess it must have surprised those Alliance cunts plenty to come onto an enemy soldier with only one foot and a yard of smile on his face.
“Drop your weapon!” the shorter one hollered. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. Same age as Turkish. I made a church out of hating him starting right then.
Still, I raised my hands. Seemed the thing to do with a gun lookin’ at my head. The taller one – real fresh, he was – looked like he’d lose his sense and take my head off then and there. His friend held up a hand in a gesture that said, “Hold up, son.” Got a smug look on his face.
When he spoke up, you didn’t have to guess he wasn’t yet out of puberty – his voice couldn’t decide on an octave for itself. “What’s your name, you worthless – “
That was about all he had time for – because that had been all the target Mouse needed to put a three-round burst in him. His friend screamed and started to turn around. I reckon if he’d made it all the way around, he would’ve seen her right through the solid wood of the trees, his eyes were so big in that split instant. No way to know for sure, though. Not her repeater nor mine ever let him have that chance.
She stepped on through the brush, pushed the branches off as she made her way through. She was tired, she was sweaty and she was filthied up fierce. And her eyes were shining with some kind of passion, and strands of her golden hair were escaping from under her helmet in places, and she was beautiful.
It was then that I started to suspect the whole love thing might be comin’ down the line. And even after what I’d just gotten through, I never asked her if she felt it then too. I just never did ask. It was enough for me to know that she did. Maybe it still don’t.
I reckon that’s more sentimental than you like it. Well, let’s press on, then.
That’s what we did, too. She couldn’t take me hangin’ off her neck anymore, though, and that raised a minor issue with me. I wasn’t hardly comfortable being carried around by a girl, whether I had a choice in it or not, but what she was suggesting now offended my manly sensibilities a shade more than a piggyback ride.
“You want me to what?” I felt like maybe I hadn’t understood her proper.
“Sir, I can’t carry you and the gear all the way back to the field hospital on this ground, all on my neck. Sir.”
“And you want to throw me over your shoulder like a…” I shook my head. “All the way back?”
“Not all the way back. I just need a different position for awhile, sir.”
“Well, what happens if the Alliance catches up to us?”
“I imagine we’ll like as not get a bullet, sir.” She rolled her big brown eyes.
“Right.” I conceded. I got my weapon by the forestock again, held it safely out away from my body as she got in close, wrapped her arms around my midsection, braced her legs and lifted me up off the hard ground. Just then, the foot started in to yellin’.
“Aaaaoooowwww, shit.” I noted. I heard and felt her sigh.
“Sir?”
“Yes.” I didn’t need her to finish that question. Another sigh. I could almost hear her thinking:
You would have to wait until I’ve picked you up and thrown you over one shoulder like a… big, heavy… something or other.
She dug around her kit with one hand, which I couldn’t see her doing but was certainly hoping for. Then felt a white-hot jolt of pain in my left buttock.
“YEOW! Gorramit!”
“Sorry, sir.”
The painkiller hit quick. Real quick. “Zarright, I’m thinkin’…” I slurred. “It looks good on ya.” The foot shut up, which was good. The world got wavy, which wasn’t so good – didn’t help my empty stomach much. But there was one feeling I held to as everything left me behind – I had taken to the notion that I would keep this woman. If there was even the smallest chance I could, I would be with her until the day I shuffled off. I wasn’t terribly sure that day wouldn’t be today, but… vacation time again.
When things came back into focus, the trees were thinner and the light blazing through them was orange diving into crimson. There was something seemed a might off about their placement, though – they were behind a hole in a wall.
Now if that strikes you as odd, I’ll tell you it came at me just that way, too. I had woken up indoors. There were tightnesses I couldn’t lay account to right away. Taking a quick survey, I found a darkish tube in my arm, and couldn’t see my stump for a thickness of sanitary sealant hiding it.
I couldn’t see Mouse nowhere. I reckon my looking around caught the eye of one of the nurses – my voice wasn’t up for that job just yet. They said Connelly found us and brought us in. Can you believe that? Damn crazy fool almost got himself shot down flying a stolen Alliance skiff back into our airspace. Old fool never has told me yet how he pulled that off.
She was next bed over from me, getting her own vacation time, as it turned out.
She carried me that day. Saved us both.
Six months after, I was honored to carry her, over the threshold of this very house where I sit and write this down tonight.
And just this morning, myself and our sons and grandsons, hers and mine, carried her one last time, to her rest.
She wasn’t gone that morning I woke up in that field hospital and saw her beautiful face glowing in peaceful rest. She wasn’t gone this morning, either, though her face showed every blissful moment of the seventy year gone by.
No, she ain’t gone. She’s only scouting ahead.
By the time Connelly popped up the hand-signal for “Enemy Ahead”, we’d already been feeling it in the air for five full minutes. It was that sense you get when things don’t add up – a sense of foreboding, knowing that something’s just over the next hill, and though you can’t conjure just what that thing is, you know you won’t like it none, ‘cause odds are it don’t like you.
It was toward the end of the war – I reckon maybe a week, maybe two, before Serenity Valley out on Hera. So maybe a month before the whole gorram thing was over and done with and the Alliance sewed it all up, signed the papers, wrote the wit for all the show-trials and took the core planets home in a pretty basket.
But I guess that’s gettin’ ahead of matters. And anyway, this ain’t about the Independents, or the Alliance… or even the war, so much. This is about a girl.
Funny, ain’t it? In the middle of all that chaos and fire and blood and screamin’, sometimes things just kinda clear up and let you see straight. Things you see come times like that, those are things you might not see any time else. Things a man really oughta see.
Well. Back to the story. Connelly pops the signal, and we all get just a little more friendly with the tall grass we were cuttin’ through after leaving the treeline behind us.
Well, we was still green, we didn’t know no better than to go slippin’ through the veggies – figured walkin’ hard dirt would give their skiffs a nice eagle-eye thermal view of our FNG skins.
Maybe a couple more days in training, we’d’ve known it works just exactly the opposite way. Their skiffs didn’t have thermal, most of ‘em. Just good long-range motion-disturbance detection, bit like the shark-fish back on Earth-That-Was.
They spotted the displacement of the pattern the grass made all by its lonesome – we were leavin’ wakes, like sea-ships on the water. We were ruttin’ new and stupid, is what. Got ‘em killed. I can still hear the screams some deep, cold midnights.
That’s what’s wrong with bunkin’ down with a bottle and a recollection. Well, again – here I am off the track of the story. Your forgiveness; old age does stalk the mind some. Let’s see, now…
Connelly’s arm went up, palm up, fingers out. Our stances dropped a little lower, and our heads began to move left-right, left-right. Wasn’t neither of Persephone’s brighter moons out that night – only Calisto, which don’t hardly cast no light anyhow during the summer months - and starlight to see by; so it was nice and cozy-dark without pulling down night-vision.
Which we couldn’t do, on account of the EMF signatures from the equipment would’ve put bulls-eyes on our backs, and orders were to make the approach dim and silent. So, no NVGs, no Cortex navs, nor even comms. We was all very prim, and that was proper.
Our greatest help that night was also our biggest harm – wasn’t but six of us to the squad. There was Private Xiu-Yan Connelly on point; behind him was Sergeant Ian Talmadge – yep, that’d be me – Private Sean “Hey” Yu. We called him ‘Hey’ on account of it wasn’t his fault his folks named him after that genocidal maniac Shan Yu.
Right beside Hey was Turkish Klein, and you ain’t never seen buddies like those two. Hey was maybe all five foot two and ninety pounds bone-soaked, and Turkish was a gorram giant, made even Connelly look like a runt, and Connelly’s six foot six and damn near three hundred pounds.
Back of the stack we called The Sisters, Sarah and Mouse. Sarah Ben David hauled the heavy iron for us, and for a little slip of a girl five foot six and one-thirty, she could haul off and hammer with that thing. I remember back at Du-Khang, we were pinned down by at least two dozen Alliance ground troops, Command told us they had rollers movin’ in and we had to get the hell out or lay down arms, those were our judgements. Well, she wedged that weapon into the open, she didn’t even hardly have no sights on ‘em, but when she let that fifteen-hundred-rounds-per-minute dog get to barkin’…
Sorry. Reckon I’m off track again. Or maybe it’s just thinkin’ on Mouse. I been doin’ that so much since she lit out for… wherever… Well, I guess it just stings a little talkin’ on her. Wish to hell she was here.
She was our medic. You as know her know she didn’t get the callsign “Mouse” by bein’ runtly. Them as don’t will want to know she was about my own size, five foot eleven, weighin’ about twenty pounds lighter than my own self, which put her right in the space of a hundred fifty, maybe a hundred sixty. That’s what a diet of mostly protein and carbs, pair that up with bein’ on the move and totin’ armor, weapons and supplies regular, that’s what it’ll do for a person.
No, she got nicked “Mouse” by bein’ the quiet one. You might look right at her, not see a ruttin’ thing. And that was a gift; it was a good thing. This night I’m relatin’, that was the very best kind of thing.
Well.
Connelly’s just thrown the signal, and we’re panning our eyes over the top of this ridge – just beyond that is a munitions dump, and that’s what we’re hitting tonight – but there’s nothing. No movement. So I give the signal for NVGs, hold up 3 fingers then count ‘em down so the squad knows they get exactly 3 full seconds to have a fluorescent look at the ridge.
I pull my own down, dial them out to fifty meters – quick look, not close enough – dial out to two hundred, another quick look – still no joy.
That’s when we heard the first shell whine down out of the sky and blast a smoking hole in sod the size of a man’s torso. Mortar.
Now, I give my people credit – fresh as they were, weren’t none of ‘em nervous in the service. First thing they did wasn’t yell or scatter or discredit themselves in their britches. First thing they did was drop and look to me.
First thing I did was look for trees. It took a click longer than I liked, but I found ‘em, just as the next shell came down screamin’. I raised up, waved ‘em after me, got into a serious variety of sprinting action.
The next one was close – I remember just having time to reckon they still had to zero us in, but they had real-time vid to do that from, so it wouldn’t take them long. As the flash faded, a shower of sod rattled on my helmet, and a scream went up from behind me. That one wasn’t incoming ordnance. That one was human, but only just.
I threw my eyes over my shoulder. I couldn’t tell who was moving and who was lying on the ground smoking. More than one of each, I could gauge that much.
“Keep moving! Go! Go! Go!” Those were my words, but I didn’t know I was giving the order when I did it. Another shell whistled down, five meters south of where I knelt down to see who we’d lost.
I laid my repeater away to the side, leaned over the smoking ruin of what was Turkish just a handful of seconds ago. He’d taken some loss – pretty much everything west of his belly button – but what wasn’t emptyin’ out his blood into the grass was too big to be anybody else. I recall that was the first time I’d ever wished a friend of mine was dead. I hope you don’t never ever get into a spot where you understand how a man could feel that way.
But Turkish wasn’t the only one we lost right that minute. I spotted Ben David’s heavy repeater away off, and I knew right as I saw it who that scream belonged to. It was tore up bad, and so was she. Not as bad as Turkish, but bad enough so that didn’t matter. Her shooting hand was probably off takin’ its ease in the tall grass somewhere. No point lookin’ for her fa… I don’t want to think on that sight no more.
It was then I saw Mouse. She hadn’t wasted time with Turkish, but she was leaned over Ben David, needle out, ready to dope her.
“Hell do you think you’re doing!” I didn’t see no point – we were a mile from the nearest field hospital, and the gorram Alliance sure as shit wasn’t going to patch up our wounded.
Mouse didn’t answer, just jammed that stick in Ben David’s good arm, gave her good shoulder a goodbye squeeze and pulled up running for the treeline.
That struck me a bit. She knew she couldn’t save Sarah; she didn’t dope her for any other thing but to let her slip away easy. That maybe is what made me fall in love with her more than the other thing she done that night.
Now I had myself a dilemma – there was no way to conjure how many of my squad were still whole and battle-ready, where they were or whether we were set up to start taking lead. Mind that Connelly had thrown up his signal – that meant he’d spotted something, but we hadn’t been able to confirm contact before the shelling started.
Another shell sirened down – closer to me this time, I gauged, for this time the flash and the crack of the explosion wasn’t just followed by debris that rained down on my helmet and armor. This time I caught a blast of hot air and my sight and hearing took a half-second to clear back to sharp. That’s what happens when you’re just out of reach of a shockwave, so I been told. I’d not known that bit of trivia, nor was I terribly fascinated over it that night.
I do recall it staggered me a bit, until a pair of strong arms caught hold of me and pulled me along until my senses got straightened out and I shook them off just as we reached the trees. I didn’t know that minute, either, who those arms belonged to.
We got in, ducked under branches, crashing through brush that tore at my fatigues, tried to lay anchor on my repeater, but I wasn’t having that. I guess it caught hold of one of the grenades on my belt, though, because I heard the snap of a pin being loosed, and found one of my own missing later on.
Whoever that grenade belonged to, though, it’s the reason I can’t never get athlete’s foot on my right foot no more.
I still hadn’t gotten around to seeing who it was just ahead of me – I had no cause to suspect right that second that it was Mouse, she’d been far up ahead when we were making our run for the trees – but when I heard that pin snap out of the ‘nade, I gave her a tackle and down we went. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t any too gentle doing it, but when the choice comes down to bustin’ a tooth on a tree root or losing a foot to anti-personnel shot-shrapnel, I reckoned she’d rather have the busted tooth.
So I got the shrapnel. Well, it don’t bother me none, except when the foot itches now and then, which the doctors swore this gorram prosthetic ain’t programmed to do.
We just lay there for a bit – not takin’ our ease-like, but mostly ‘cause we was both busy with our respective body parts screamin’ in our heads.
I rolled off her – almost tried to stand up, until I looked down and saw where all that pain was comin’ at me from. I figured right then that it wasn’t a good time for a nature hike. Well, that made me laugh some, which is what shock is for. I don’t see that shock does much of anything else.
She sat up and gave me the dirtiest kind of look about the same time the last of the mortar explosions flashed lightning and thunder at us through the trees. She spit some blood onto the tree root that had wronged her, then held one hand to her mouth and scrambled around for her medkit.
I still hadn’t got it through my head that the tangled mess of shredded nytaneon and shredded leather and shredded meat at the end of my leg wasn’t my foot no more, and by the time I had that straightened out, she’d taken a hold on my arm to give me a pop of painkiller. She told me later how I struggled quite a bit over that – I still wasn’t entirely back in my head yet.
I do remember how she wrapped the one arm around mine, though, put a touch of a death-grip on it, and finally got that needle in. The world dropped out from under me right about that time, and I took a vacation.
I came back to the world with the butt of my repeater under my hand and soft light filtering down through the green canopy of the forest – Dortmunder Forest, as it was named after the war. Now the name of the forest is probably much less interesting to you than was the puzzle of where the hell she and I were in it was to me.
Because we sure as shit weren’t anywhere near the edge of it – there was surely some news I’d missed out on while I’d been out. That shot she’d given me wasn’t completely done, that was sure. My stomach was leaping and my head was spinning, both thanks to the anaesthetic still at work, and I let loose the previous night’s field ration off to the side of us. I felt a might better after, but not much.
I guess that woke her – she stirred some, then yawned, then clenched her eyes shut against the pain of doing that. A little stream of tears made it past her eyelids, but to her credit she didn’t make a single unbecoming sound. Just sat up, fought the reflex to put her hand over what was left of that tooth – that just would’ve pained her more, I’ve learned – and gave my stump a look.
“I got the bleeding stopped.” She said. Her words were slurred a little bit, with her trying to talk around that tooth. “How’s the pain, sir?”
“Oh, it’s wonderful.” I guess it hurt enough again to make me somewhat snappy. “Best pain ever.” I checked my chrono, not wanting to see if there was hurt on her face. “How much downtime did you get?”
She shrugged. “Maybe four hours, sir. Maybe five. I couldn’t stay awake, I’m sorry.” She made a point of sorting the insides of her medkit, but I could feel she was making more of a point to not look at me.
“It’s shiny, Mouse. I’m pretty sure no Alliance killed us while we were sleepin’.”
“Glad to hear that, sir.”
I let her flip slide, on account of I gave her one first. “You feel to get movin’?” A thought occurred to me. “Which, how exactly did we manage that last night?”
“I…” she seemed embarrassed. “I carried you, sir.”
“Did you, now?” This seemed mightily unlikely to me that morning. Of course… well, I don’t know why. She was a grown woman of healthy size, and a soldier at that. I guess it was just my old-fashioned raising made me doubt it at first.
“Yes, sir.” She withdrew another pair of syrettes from her kit, giving herself one.
“What’s that?” I asked, concerned at the prospect of being carried through the trees and over uneven ground by a woman who wasn’t doped, let alone by one who was.
“It’s a local, sir, to quiet my tooth is all.” She took to a knee over me.
“I don’t need another shot.” I waved her away. “Not yet. I ain’t over the first one.”
“You’re on your second, sir.” She informed me, but capped the needle and put it back in its case and then into her kit anyway. “You let me know when it’s time.”
“Where are the others?” I noticed none of the rest of our squad were to be seen.
“No idea, sir.” She looked around again herself. “We lost Klein and Ben David to the first round of mortar. I found… I found what was left of Hey just as we made it into the trees. I haven’t seen any trace of Connelly.”
“Did you try fixing on him with the Cortex Nav?” I could see right away she hadn’t. She hadn’t been given the order. Good soldier. “Well, do it now.”
“Sir?”
“They obviously think we’re already dead, Mouse. Otherwise, we would be by now. Get on the Cortex and see if you get a fix on Connelly’s tag.”
“Yes, sir.” She drew her HHDT – we didn’t call Hand-Held Data Terminals “pods” back then – and read the screen for a second or two before she gave it a look about twice as mean as the one she’d given me for making her kiss that root.
“No sign of Connelly, sir, but we have to go.” She put the HHDT away and got up in a hurry. “We have to go right now.”
“Problem?” I asked, getting a good grip on the forestock of my repeater and slipping my arm through the strap of my gear bag as she got down on her knees with her back to me.
“A whole squad of problems, sir, about close enough to piss at us. And a skiff sitting on the next ridge ready to watch the whole thing.”
I still wasn’t cozy with the idea of letting her carry me – but I was more particular against the idea of getting shot. Or worse, captured. I put my arms around her neck, tucked my good leg around the front of hers, and sort of tucked my other up under myself, tried not to let the frayed end jostle against either her or me as the ground fell away and we started off through the rough.
Fifteen minutes out, maybe twenty, we heard them. Two men – kids, like us – talking at each other like it was a Sunday picnic. I tapped her collarbone with one hand, leaned forward to whisper in her ear:
“Set me down here, then flank left.”
Now, she was a medic. And – I hate to come across sexist – a woman medic, on that. I had no call to expect her to do what she did then. She didn’t argue. She didn’t fuss at all. She did just as I ordered, right then and there, smooth and quiet.
I slid down, rested my back to a tree, and by the time I looked up, she’d disappeared without a sound. I guess it must have surprised those Alliance cunts plenty to come onto an enemy soldier with only one foot and a yard of smile on his face.
“Drop your weapon!” the shorter one hollered. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. Same age as Turkish. I made a church out of hating him starting right then.
Still, I raised my hands. Seemed the thing to do with a gun lookin’ at my head. The taller one – real fresh, he was – looked like he’d lose his sense and take my head off then and there. His friend held up a hand in a gesture that said, “Hold up, son.” Got a smug look on his face.
When he spoke up, you didn’t have to guess he wasn’t yet out of puberty – his voice couldn’t decide on an octave for itself. “What’s your name, you worthless – “
That was about all he had time for – because that had been all the target Mouse needed to put a three-round burst in him. His friend screamed and started to turn around. I reckon if he’d made it all the way around, he would’ve seen her right through the solid wood of the trees, his eyes were so big in that split instant. No way to know for sure, though. Not her repeater nor mine ever let him have that chance.
She stepped on through the brush, pushed the branches off as she made her way through. She was tired, she was sweaty and she was filthied up fierce. And her eyes were shining with some kind of passion, and strands of her golden hair were escaping from under her helmet in places, and she was beautiful.
It was then that I started to suspect the whole love thing might be comin’ down the line. And even after what I’d just gotten through, I never asked her if she felt it then too. I just never did ask. It was enough for me to know that she did. Maybe it still don’t.
I reckon that’s more sentimental than you like it. Well, let’s press on, then.
That’s what we did, too. She couldn’t take me hangin’ off her neck anymore, though, and that raised a minor issue with me. I wasn’t hardly comfortable being carried around by a girl, whether I had a choice in it or not, but what she was suggesting now offended my manly sensibilities a shade more than a piggyback ride.
“You want me to what?” I felt like maybe I hadn’t understood her proper.
“Sir, I can’t carry you and the gear all the way back to the field hospital on this ground, all on my neck. Sir.”
“And you want to throw me over your shoulder like a…” I shook my head. “All the way back?”
“Not all the way back. I just need a different position for awhile, sir.”
“Well, what happens if the Alliance catches up to us?”
“I imagine we’ll like as not get a bullet, sir.” She rolled her big brown eyes.
“Right.” I conceded. I got my weapon by the forestock again, held it safely out away from my body as she got in close, wrapped her arms around my midsection, braced her legs and lifted me up off the hard ground. Just then, the foot started in to yellin’.
“Aaaaoooowwww, shit.” I noted. I heard and felt her sigh.
“Sir?”
“Yes.” I didn’t need her to finish that question. Another sigh. I could almost hear her thinking:
You would have to wait until I’ve picked you up and thrown you over one shoulder like a… big, heavy… something or other.
She dug around her kit with one hand, which I couldn’t see her doing but was certainly hoping for. Then felt a white-hot jolt of pain in my left buttock.
“YEOW! Gorramit!”
“Sorry, sir.”
The painkiller hit quick. Real quick. “Zarright, I’m thinkin’…” I slurred. “It looks good on ya.” The foot shut up, which was good. The world got wavy, which wasn’t so good – didn’t help my empty stomach much. But there was one feeling I held to as everything left me behind – I had taken to the notion that I would keep this woman. If there was even the smallest chance I could, I would be with her until the day I shuffled off. I wasn’t terribly sure that day wouldn’t be today, but… vacation time again.
When things came back into focus, the trees were thinner and the light blazing through them was orange diving into crimson. There was something seemed a might off about their placement, though – they were behind a hole in a wall.
Now if that strikes you as odd, I’ll tell you it came at me just that way, too. I had woken up indoors. There were tightnesses I couldn’t lay account to right away. Taking a quick survey, I found a darkish tube in my arm, and couldn’t see my stump for a thickness of sanitary sealant hiding it.
I couldn’t see Mouse nowhere. I reckon my looking around caught the eye of one of the nurses – my voice wasn’t up for that job just yet. They said Connelly found us and brought us in. Can you believe that? Damn crazy fool almost got himself shot down flying a stolen Alliance skiff back into our airspace. Old fool never has told me yet how he pulled that off.
She was next bed over from me, getting her own vacation time, as it turned out.
She carried me that day. Saved us both.
Six months after, I was honored to carry her, over the threshold of this very house where I sit and write this down tonight.
And just this morning, myself and our sons and grandsons, hers and mine, carried her one last time, to her rest.
She wasn’t gone that morning I woke up in that field hospital and saw her beautiful face glowing in peaceful rest. She wasn’t gone this morning, either, though her face showed every blissful moment of the seventy year gone by.
No, she ain’t gone. She’s only scouting ahead.
