In the Valley (8 page)

As if on cue, a series of muted commands went through the ranks, and First and Second Companies began to move.

Bashir spoke a little more with his platoon leaders and looked over at Paul, as if to ask whether Paul had the courage to accompany his men. Paul started to walk.

Paul looked ahead at First Company’s column. He looked for Green, the advisor team’s intel guy and the ad-hoc replacement for Mighty Mike and Stork, the medic, the usual advisor duo for First Company. Paul couldn’t see him, so he called up a micro view of the column and looked for Green’s icon. With an assist from his halo, Paul spotted him, 243 meters ahead, on the other side of the snaking column. Green was accompanying Freidag, one of First Company’s platoon leaders.

Paul was a little worried about Green. He had been brought out to Firebase Atarab via ground-car only the day before yesterday as a replacement for Mighty Mike, and this was Green’s first basic dismounted movement, unarmored. It could be a little scary moving out with the locals outside of your cocoon. Paul
should know: he had done it many times. Well, thought Paul, Green is getting a righteous baptism today—no doubt about it. As the intel guy, Green just hadn’t had as many cracks at this as Paul had had. Paul hoped Green wouldn’t start developing the shakes as well. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Speaking of a case of the shakes, Paul was good to go for the moment. Strangely, when the action started, the shakes quit. Paul wondered why that was, but the fact remained.

Paul was finally moving. He shifted his load again and compulsively checked his halo load-out diagram: 440 rounds, 6.8 mm—check. Adequate water, stored in his back bladder—check. Rations for one day—check. Personal medical equipment—check. Three smoke grenades, all different colors—check. Two M67 fragmentation grenades—check. The list scrolled on the left side of his vision while he moved with Second Company to the outer perimeter of the firebase.

A couple more steps and he was walking past a Juneau Army ground-car with an incongruous antilander cannon. That meant that Paul had reached the outer perimeter. Strangely enough, his balls did not pull up into his belly from the tension. He knew that he was headed into unsuited combat, but he felt good. His body would hold on throughout the movement. He was trained, experienced, and had all the right toys.

The branches of dinosaur trees arched overhead, making a curious mottled light as he walked. Paul heard some clanking of equipment to his front and cursing in a low voice. No one wanted to give away the column, so violations of noise discipline were dealt with summarily and harshly.

Paul saw Bashir in front of him, clearly. Bashir moved as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And as usual, he carried no weapons openly. Bashir left the big guns for his soldiers—if he needed to mete out death, he would do it at close range with his Deutsch surplus P-39.

Paul had seen Bashir in action a couple of days ago. A wounded dissident had reached for a weapon as they were entering a house, and Bashir had
smoothly dispatched him with the pistol that had been tucked under his shirt. He shot the man before anyone else even had a chance to react.

Bashir was a pro, and his men were killers. Paul felt a gathering power in the darkness as they marched toward Pashto Khel. As he turned north with Second Company toward the river, Paul was ready for whatever came next.

A
fter completing advanced infantry training, it was traditional for soldiers to get a few weeks of block leave before shipping off-world. So Paul went home with a halo certificate that authorized him thirty days of freedom before his life-changing trip to the stars.

Freedom
: Paul couldn’t think of a better word for the marvelous feeling he felt as he flew from the shuttle terminal in Oklahoma City, bound for Pittsburgh. In the Oklahoma City terminal he didn’t feel his liberation so much because there were coffles of force recruits doing the perp walk down to Fort Sill, with cadre guidance to keep them from going astray. Paul felt the recruits’ pain, having been in their position only twenty weeks earlier.

In fact, he wished he could shrink into the floor to stay away from the hard-faced sergeants he saw in the terminal there. However, the cadre from Sill paid him no attention in his dress browns. He was clearly on leave, headed somewhere. The training cadre had bigger fish to fry than one lone trooper in his browns. Besides, Paul looked squared away in his dress uniform. There was nothing out of regulations about him. From the stiff high collar of his blouse, adorned with the crossed-rifles pin, to the permapolish dark brown of his low-quarters (his dress shoes), his look was squared away.

He was no longer a recruit in the training and doctrine command. He had orders on his halo that said so, visible to all with mil-grade government access. His orders stated that on 28MAR15 (March 28, 2315) he was to board
transportation from his HOR (home of record, a ubiquitous military acronym) to Force Installation Gutierrez, in Cuba. From Cuba, he would loft upward with an unknown number of fellow soldiers and navy types via hypersonic shuttle to the FSS
Merton R. Johnson
, the outbound freighter to the Hyades cluster, 153 light-years away.

Apparently the world he was going to was Ottawa 6, and it orbited a star called
Tauri
-something. He really didn’t know much about the place, and frankly, he didn’t care. All his eyes had seen upon first receiving his orders were the words “153 light-years distant.” The words seemed to slam a door shut in his head. Paul had signed a contract with the forces; this was the result.

A staggering distance: 153 light-years. Secretly, while at Sill, he had hoped he would go to some training billet in Brazilia or something. That would be far enough away to satisfy his wanderlust, close enough that his whole life near a distant star called
Sol
wouldn’t be hard to find in the night sky of some distant world.

Well, that wish just hadn’t worked out. As his father was fond of saying, “Wish in one hand, and shit in the other: see which one fills up first.” In Paul’s mind, the shit hand had been filled, and the wish hand was woefully empty. He would be going to work in some way faraway place with algal mats for bedfellows and some freaky yellow sky or something. Oh yeah, and chances were some dissident asshole would be trying to blow him up.

His orders, as many times as he had looked at him, had given no hint. They simply said:

SM (service member) to report on 28MAR15 for transportation to near space at Force Installation Gutierrez, Cuba. SM will be shipped outbound on the FSS
Merton R. Johnson
. Journey will take approx. 270 +/–30 days Earth relative.

SM will serve in the Hyades AO for three (3) years. First world of service is Pan-American Federation World Ottawa 6.

SM will be met at Hope shuttle port by unit representatives upon landfall.

SM is assigned as Grenadier, Det 2, H Co. 2/18 IN (Armored).

After that was a bunch of gobbledygook about pay and allowances and how he was authorized thirty-five kilos of gear and ten kilos of “personal effects,” excluding “unauthorized items”—followed by a long list of such items.

One item had caught his eye: “Artificial Intelligence Sexual Services Device, Humanoid Shape.” Really? They had thought of that too? Paul thought for a second. With some of the guys he had known so far, he could see it. So someone had surely tried it. Paul would have died of embarrassment to be caught with something like that, let alone using one.

Besides, now that he was wearing a regulations-compliant civilian halo (must be black or brown plastic in appearance, with no ornamentation) and not that piece-of-shit recruit one, he had access to all his good stuff again, including his recordings of Rhoda. Life was good.

He had pinged his father from Oklahoma City, letting him know that he was coming in. His father answered right back, saying that he’d meet him outside of security in Pittsburgh. His family had rented a ground-car to pick him up.

Paul cruised out of the gangway leading from the shuttle in Pittsburgh. The weather outside was sunny but cold, at minus two degrees Celsius.

He had just spent his flight making out with the woman in the seat next to him. He made his distance from her now, though, because apparently her boyfriend was waiting on her. It was an odd situation but, he thought, a very nice way to start his leave.

His randiness and ready-to-party mood was quenched a bit, however, by the thought of the orders lurking on his halo. What was he going to tell his
parents? Paul remembered how upset Father had been years ago when he got that message from Uncle Jack.

Well, he rationalized, it was not like he had to make a career of the forces. After all, one of the big selling points the recruiter had given him (he finally had spoken with him) was that every separating force member would be guaranteed a berth back to Earth on the next available transport. Of course, they only had one shot at that offer.

Paul didn’t quite get the ramifications of that offer at the time. He was young, and life was offering him a bountiful bouquet of delicious foods and new friends. Also, every young woman seemed to him at that time to be a garden of fresh delights, and he was a bunny. Paul was a typical young man, straight out of over half of a year’s worth of the military straitjacket.

He knew his father was waiting on him, but he had to walk over to the chain bar in the terminal and order his first ever legal beer. Much to the disgruntlement of the trainees, they had been authorized no beer during their two brief passes into Lawton. The recruit halo had kept them honest. Boy—was Paul ever glad to turn in that treacherous device when he out-processed at Fort Sill!

Usually, alcohol was not sold to persons under the age of twenty-five, but Paul was on active duty and in uniform, so he was entitled. He had to do this. He walked up to the counter. An older man was busy polishing glasses. Paul was sure he was doing that just to look busy; there had to be a sanitizer under the counter. The fellow looked up. He had a prizefighter’s broken nose. That was pretty unusual: most people would have gone to the autodoc to have the defect fixed.

“What’ll ya have, trooper?” It was exactly the time-honored question Paul had been expecting.

“I think I’ll have a Yuengling,” Paul squeaked. How typical, at such a moment of triumph, that his voice would break. The bartender pretended not
to notice and poured him one. He made a thick head on the top and handed it over.

Paul reached out and took it like it was the nectar of the gods. He took a long pull and sighed with delight. The yeasty deliciousness was so thick he swore he could taste the brew with his nose alone. This day was getting better and better.

The bartender eyed Paul up knowingly. “What outfit are you with?” he asked.

Feeling heady and magnanimous with the brew, Paul shot back with what was on his orders: “H Co, 2/18 Infantry, Armored,” he said. He figured he’d impress the keep with that one. Everyone knew about the armored infantry—they were on all the cool videos.

But the bartender surprised him instead. “Bayonet soldiers, huh? I worked with them some years ago.” He had an odd look in his eyes. Paul noticed that he shook himself a little and found a spot on the spotless bar that he really needed to wipe.

Bayonet soldiers? Huh? How come this civvy apparently knew more about his unit than he did? Oh yeah, duh, he must be a veteran, Paul thought. There weren’t many of them, but they were around. Maybe he could pump him for some info.

He took another gulp of his beer and started off. “Well, sir, I’m going off-world next month, and that’s my new unit. Could you tell me something about them? No one at Sill seemed to know anything about my new outfit.” No surprise, that—with units spread over three hundred light-years in all directions.

The keep stopped what he was doing, gave a little smile, and drawled, “You’ll be sorrrry!”

Paul didn’t know how to react to that. So he swallowed his beer down fast, scuttled away, and went to meet his father on the other side of security.

R
iding in the armored ground-car to the village of Buree, Pathan Province, Paul was sorry he had ever accepted the assignment as an advisor to the Juneau 3 Army. He was in the company of his new advisees, led by a certain madman named Bashir. Paul had been on-planet for about a month.