The Jupiter War Page 15

  Oxygen through a face mask smelled sweet and rich. His first words were to ask about the condition of the ship and crew, but the female medical officer, chunky and competent, only answered, “Everything’s in hand, Captain. You’ve done more than your job, now let us do ours.” After a quick once-over she declared him dehydrated and concussed, and ordered him taken to sickbay for further tests. His protests were answered with a stinging injection.

  Aurora awaited him in a too-bright cubicle that smelled of antiseptic. When they rolled him in on a gurney, bloody and soaked with sweat, she turned away.

  “No worries,” he tried to reassure her. “I just need to clean up and get some rest. In a few days, I’ll be fit again.”

  When she turned to face him, he was surprised to see that she was angry. Her cheeks were two red spots in a paper-white face. “I was so afraid,” she accused, “I realized I’ve never really known fear before.” She wiped eyes suddenly wet. “I can’t take any more of it. I’m glad you’re all right, but it’s over between us, from this moment.”

  “Wait a minute. You can’t blame me for being mortal. So you discovered people can die, even people you love. You had to learn that,” he slurred, becoming uncontrollably sleepy.

  “I was paralyzed with fear. I had to leave my post and couldn’t do anything but cry. I should have known better, they tried to tell me what it would be like to love a singleton. I guess I didn’t really believe that anything could happen to the great Garrison Cheevers until these last few hours. I can’t go through that again. I’m going back where I belong. Sky has been more than patient.”

  So what he suspected all along was true. He was assaulted by confused images of Aurora and Sky—always off duty at the same time—in each other’s arms. “Nobody is immortal, he can die too,” he said cruelly.

  “Perhaps, but in that case, I’ll still have two more lovers.”

  Whatever survived of Cheever’s innocence bled away then, in the implacability of her clear blue eyes. None too soon the drug administered by the MO took full effect and consciousness darkened into troubled sleep.

  * * *

  Optimism aside, Cheevers spent an uncomfortable two weeks in sickbay. His misery was such that he did not complain when the MO insisted on bed rest and drugs to keep the persistent headaches at bay.

  In lucid moments between bouts he tried to think of good times, and came to realize that those times were inexorably bound up with—home. And Meredy. Meredy, bent over their big gelding, riding like the wind. Meredy, washing her lustrous black hair. Meredy feeding a lost baby roo with a velvety coat. Meredy—waiting by his hospital bed in Sydney.

  Unbidden came thoughts about Wainwright Caine, who’d had his brains scrambled in the caves under Olympus Mons. He had tried to do right by his kids, but between intervals in hospital and the Space Service’s isolating them for their own purpose, he hadn’t been able to. Even when SpaCom had realized it was going wrong, they hadn’t drawn back. Neither was Cheevers proud of his part in the mess.

  He decided that from now on things were going to be different. Civilians or not, he was captain of this ship. The sextuplets—he winced at the word—were going to be separated, and if and when they got back he’d do his damnedest to see they got the therapy they needed. The Space Service owed Wainwright Caine that much, at the least. And he owed Aurora the chance of a normal life.

  On the fifteenth day of September Cheevers woke for the first time, fully conscious and free of pain. He looked at a watch that showed time and date in a half dozen places, and realized with a pang that it was springtime in Australia. The grass would be greening and the creek running-at home. Suddenly there was a lump in his throat and a pain in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with his injuries.

  Surely it wasn’t too late to start over. Perhaps if they had a baby—other Space Service couples had made use of medical science. No multiple births though. Definitely not.

  He wondered whether Meredy could ever understand, much less forgive him. He had to find out if he had a marriage to go back to. And had Meredy been able to keep up the ranch? Eight hundred sheep weren’t much compared with the big outfits, but it was a great deal of work and responsibility. When he began to wonder about the price of wool he knew that, even a half billion klicks out, he had come home at last.

  They were in the war zone now; a relayed transmission burst would not give away positions the enemy already knew, and in any case Callisto Command must be notified of their arrival coordinates. It was time the captain was back at his post.

  Without waiting for the MO, he dressed quickly in clothes that were roomier than before. Making good use of the walls, he went to his cabin and folded down the desk unit. He keyed open a drawer and took out a small box he had not opened since the Gallipoli had embarked for Callisto. Inside lay the gold pen Meredy had given him on his graduation from the U.N. Space Academy. He ran his fingertips slowly over the engraved message on the side. It read: “I’ll love you always.”

  With trembling hands he began to write. Considering the double time delay, the answer arrived sooner than he’d hoped.

  The words were the same as those on the pen.

  THE “combat space suit” was one of those strange terms, an oxymoron. This means it was a self-contradictory phrase, the most quoted example of this being the much-maligned “military intelligence.” Virtually everywhere, but on Earth itself in the Solar System itself, had a terminally hostile environment. Any space suit was a container, in which was maintained a complete artificial environment that closely simulated that of Earth. Given the number of factors this involved, such as fresh air, temperature, pressure, moisture, waste disposal, and the like, the space suit the was a complicated and sensitive mechanism. By way of contrast, combat during the Jupiter War was hard on everything involved: men and equipment. To wear a space suit in combat was the equivalent of counting on a paper bag to keep you dry while scuba diving: there are going to be problems. There were just too many things that could be damaged or break, with fatal consequences.

  Even when something didn’t kill you, a space suit capable of extended use on any of the Jovian moons was cumbersome and uncomfortable. From a military viewpoint the space suit had all the disadvantages of a tank, but none of the advantages. Wearing a space suit limited peripheral vision. It also prevented sighting equipment from being placed too close to the operator’s eye. A Jupiter War space suit also was an active machine. It had to constantly perform a number of functions. This means that every suit had an ever-present electronic and heat signature, and it was made of highly refined metal. All of these factors made any suit comparatively easy to detect. There was very little that could be done about it. The shielding needed to eliminate these signals would have made movement impossible. A space suit was also much too small to have built-in ECM. Finally, the weight of the oxygen and suit components was not small. Even in a low-gravity environment, fighting the inertia of two hundred kilos of suit was a strain. Hurrying in the cumbersome, stiff suits was so awkward as to appear almost comical. Even beyond its vulnerability to damage, and the almost always-fatal consequences of suit failure, the space suit simply made it hard to fight. That the marines and special units from both sides were able to mount numerous “land” actions using suit-clad forces is a tribute to human ingenuity and perseverance.

  The Mark Six, Interstel Combat Suit worn by U.N. marines was a marvel of miniaturization and dependability by that era’s standards. However, not among the twenty-first century’s accomplishments was the development of an air-purifier capable of removing body odors from a space suit during extended wear. It was also a myth that after a certain point the wearer ceased to be aware of the stink this created. Eventually most marines simply learned to tolerate it. Nor was there any modification possible in the basic design that could prevent the chafing that occurred under the arms and between the user’s legs. Finally, being in a space suit for da
ys at a time meant that those wastes exuded by the skin were trapped against that same skin. This inevitably multiplied the odor problem—and itched, a torment complicated by the wearer’s total inability to scratch.

  A WHOLE detachment of Confederate marines destroyed by the closet monster. No way to put that in a report, no way to make it make sense. And we do like to make sense. History is a science, after all, and military history is the core of the discipline.

  There are the stories, of course. The ghost ships and the shepherds over the English Channel during the World Wars, the bogeymen in the jungles and the ancient gods interfering in the wars of men. And everyone laughs. So how can you explain lo? Somehow, I don’t think the Archives Command is going to accept nightmares. And that leaves me no choice but to commend Spec. 2 James Llewelyn Reed, the stupidest man ever to wear the uniform, for the Order of St. Michael. And that hurts.

  History is going to judge us, in the end. And I intend to go down in it, if for nothing else than for proving that it takes more than logic and firepower to win a war. Vindication. McAllister’s resignation would be nice, too, but that counts for less. It is worth the weeks, months sitting on the ice, waiting. Ready. Because it might have been luck before, or Jimmy’s sheer stupidity, but the next time proves me out. Once could be ignored. But there isn’t going to be any once about it, and that’s where my brilliance shines.

  McAllister is wrong. A woman is perfectly capable of strategy. He has forgotten Jean d’Arc and Isabelle D’Este and Caterina Sforza, just to name a few. And he had forgotten the praying mantis and the spider. But he isn’t going to forget me, ever. And that will be a perfect and fitting revenge.

  The Confederates did everything exactly right. Selected a site next to the ice field, but under the cover and on solid footing. Set up perimeter according to Berante’s outline before they erected the camp. Food and battery packs stored well to center, heavy equipment facing outward and around, good defense. Classic. Perfect. Any instructor on the general staff of either side would have given their commanding officer (had to be some green lieutenant) an A. Except in my class.

  Of course, being Confederate, no chance he or she ever took my course. Not that it was popular, at least not with the higher-ups, who managed to remove it from the curriculum and me from the faculty. So far as they were concerned I taught ancient history, since bypassed by the wonders of technological improvements on firepower. I should have been teaching what would have happened if there had been air support at Thermopopylae, I guess, or Sitting Bull’s nuclear strategy. So they put me on ice. I’d heard that joke once too often, and this time it was unfortunately true.

  How the Confederates ever heard of the dump here, out back of Io, I don’t know. Most of our own Command hasn’t heard of it and doesn’t have the faintest idea of what we’ve got down here. Most of them probably don’t even know that more than one bushrunner cached the goods here and then went on. Or got caught in a lava flow and disappeared under the crust. The dark side of Io (which isn’t dark at all, just deprived of the prime view of Jupiter) isn’t exactly your prime tourist spot.

  Frankly, I was amazed that they set down decently at all. There are thin spots in the ice, places where the magma splits the surface and wells up smoking like a scene from Baptist Hell. The low flats, for example, are always breaking and reforming, crusting over with a brittle shell that has threatened me more than once.

  Or maybe they didn’t know it was here at all, which, given current policy, seems about as logical as anything else. They just settled down to steal a little ice—plenty of hydrogen going to waste out here and no one shooting at you like you were trying to net it up from old granddad Jupiter itself. Plenty of oxygen, too, and let’s not forget the pure bravado of setting down on some patch of dirt the enemy owns, be it in name only.

  Name, that is, and me and Jimmy Reed, my inventory clerk.

  And we were sitting pretty. The cache had an underground fortified “living area” that mainly consisted of control panels, instant rations, and a chemical head. The converters managed to use the hydrogen and oxygen frozen on the surface to supply my needs without need for additional support, and the geothermal batteries were pumping more juice than three of me could need.

  Besides which, they weren’t looking for us. I could see that from the way they set their camp. A few quick jet-over patrols to make sure the terrain was suitable, maybe mark our earlier attempts, but nothing like a regular search mission, let alone a serious attack. No, those boys back home must have figured this to be virgin territory. Sort of like the old time cowboys did. Turnerism and the expansion of the West. My research didn’t exactly agree with that point of view.

  “What are we going to do, boss?” Jimmy asked. Jimmy didn’t know squat about Turner or guerrilla warfare or even how to go interactive with the one radio cannon (small gauge) we hadn’t cannibalized yet.

  “Well,” I told him, “I don’t really know. Naturally I would prefer a friendly chat, some coffee cake, maybe a couple of hands of bridge, that kind of thing. Just like the faculty lounge at the Staff Training College. But I have the oddest suspicion that the present company might not be exactly neighborly, seeing as how they are all loaded with firepower and keep their blast-shields lowered. You know, it looks as if they think we’re about to unload a few megatons out of pure boredom.”

  Jimmy blinked. “But we don’t have a few megatons, boss. Want me to shoot out their jetpacks?”

  And the history books say that we were the aggressors. Now I ask you, isn’t it simple, when someone shows up on your doorstep and points a gun in your face you don’t exactly feel like inviting them in and making them tea. Admittedly, invaders get a touch paranoid, but then perhaps they have every reason to. And even in what looks like virgin space, territory unmarked by human feet, there is always the sense that something is lurking. The closet monster has never really been defeated.

  Which is to say, there were a whole lot of them and two of us. Pity they were so outmanned. I mean, if there had been a few more of us then we would have had a reasonable-sized camp that could be identified from a flyby. In that case the only options would have been pass or slug it out.

  Slug it out with brute force, being the preferred strategy of rigid thinking, has always baffled me. The British wore red coats and marched in straight lines. They still teach recruits to march in straight lines. Even when it’ll kill them. And it invariably does. So I watched as the young lieutenant set up guard shifts and perimeter patrols, layout hot mines, and generally do all the correct and approved things. Pretty soon, I’d bet, they’ll have the infrared scanners up. Not that I was worried. There’s enough insulation in the bunker to convince a polar bear this was cold. And we were deep enough that against the background of the inner layers themselves we wouldn’t show up at all. Even the geothermal batteries were passive, charging off the excesses of Io in formation.

  The only real danger at the moment was that Jimmy would take those damned training tapes too seriously and go out and try to play hero. That was probably the worst part of the job. It’s one thing to get me away from any career path, away from anyone who would listen to strategy that could payoff. But to stick me with a half-idiot like Jimmy was worse than loneliness. The boy was unteachable.

  And I had tried. Believe me, I had done everything possible to instruct him in the finer points of military history, chess, even his own job. He was hopeless. He had been sent because it was the only place he couldn’t do any damage, I suppose, but there was the added fillip that he infuriated me. Constantly. This time I sent him off to catalog our weapons store, which sounded like a real job and kept him out of my line of fire before I sent him into the enemy’s.

  Oh, I forgot to mention Jimmy’s one redeeming quality. He could shoot anything at all. Deadeye, sharpshooter—an anachronism in modern warfare just like everything else. He enjoyed going out in a softsuit and shooting used heating trays from the ra
tion tins across the flats. And he hit them dead on more often than not. Well, I had wondered how the stupid survived to reproduce and here was a prime example. The thing of if was, if Jimmy said he could shoot out the jetpacks I was perfectly prepared to believe that he could. And he’d enjoy doing it, too. Not that that would help in our current dilemma.

  I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the situation. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of my old colleagues, one of the ones who sat in on the hearings when I was canned, had planted a leak to a double agent. Or let it out that there was nothing at all on the backside of Io, practically issuing a written invitation. I could easily believe that one of them had set me up. McAllister in particular, I suspected. McAllister never forgave me for flunking him, and went on to publish six papers disputing claims of guerrilla warfare against conventional tactics.

  Of course, it’s as easy to believe that the whole thing was simply the fault of stupidity, too. McAllister is just the type to say that there aren’t any outposts on the backside of Io at some cocktail party because ignorance and martinis are an excellent match. Security sucks on the cocktail circuit.

  However, McAllister or no, done was done and I was stuck. Much as I hated to admit it, there was a certain amount of time constraint. Not that my posting was due up anytime soon, but we were due to have another inspection run from the quartermaster general. Maybe this time Someone could even use the ammunition stockpiled under the bunker, along with a carton of replacement II-M37 chips (now superseded by the II-RL1, which has twice the redundancy because it has twice the trouble), and thirty-seven tonnes of freeze-dried Brussels sprouts. Not to mention the basic hydrogen and oxygen mined and ready for shipment, or the additional smart-seekers that lock navigation on to an enemy radar reading. Those might actually be of some use. .