A Private Little War (46 page)

“How long have you been here, Commander? On Iaxo?”

“Two years,” Ted replied, making it sound like a thousand.

“I’m amazed at how little you’ve managed to pick up in all that time.”

Ted huffed. He folded his arms. “Piece of fucking work, you are,” he said, looking skyward through squinted eyes.

Connelly shrugged. “I work for them. They expect me to provide. To negotiate with the big fliers. Bring down the manna.”

“Yeah. And understand their fuck rituals and wave your magic stick around. You’d kill at a costume party. How long have
you
been here?”

“Six years,” he said.

“Your company is patient,” Ted said.

“My company.” Connelly smiled and looked out, as though over some far horizon. “My company.
This
is my company, now. These men.”

“They’re not men.”

“Eastbourne is not patient, Theodore. Back then, we were among the first to come to Iaxo. Long before you. There were two hundred of us, dropped in with a one-year deadline. We were to infiltrate one side or the other, the Akaveen Ctirad or the Lassateirra, though neither of them had names then that we understood. Whichever side we chose, we would offer our services, off-world supply, ally with them, and negotiate a patch of four hundred thousand acres as payment. Land and mineral rights. Air and water. Everything. We had lawyers, xenobiologists, linguists, engineers. One hundred and fifty soldiers, armed to the teeth and with five hundred tons of arms and ammunition buried in the hills. We chose the Akaveen Ctirad because the Akaveen were warriors and because they were the first natives we stumbled across who didn’t immediately try to kill us. That took almost the entire year. And by then, there were about sixty of us remaining. You know what I was?”

“No. What were you?”

“I was a geologist. I’d come along to take soil and mineral samples. But after almost a year, we knew that none of that mattered anymore. We’d talked to the company, to Eastbourne. We’d told them that we
needed more men, more supplies, that there was something about this place that was… indefatigable. And do you know what they did?”

Ted looked away.

“Eastbourne abandoned us here. They forgot about us. Wrote us off. No, they are not a patient company. But the Akaveen are patient.”

Somewhere amid the bangles, tatters, and fur of Connelly’s outfit, there was a squealing chirp. Ted recoiled at the sound. “You pull a goddamn bird out of your ass or something, I’m going to be sick.”

Not a bird. An old-fashioned microwave radio receiver/transmitter headset that Connelly scissored open and tucked around the shell of his ear. By the local standard, it was still miraculous, of course, but it was the sort of thing that made the cast-away gear Ted had at the airfield look brand-new.

The indigs by the door had fallen silent as soon as they’d heard the chirp. They all watched their magical human, looking up from their crouches with big staring eyes.

Ted knew three words of indig. There was
aka
, which meant yes;
nu,
which meant no; and a word that sounded something like
shipping
and meant something like shit-eater, or close to it—an all-purpose exclamation and terrible insult to the natives which, for a time, he and his men had used at every opportunity because it’d been funny to watch the camp indigs flinch at hearing it. Oddly, or perhaps only coincidentally, Connelly used all three in his call. And only those three.

Aka
, he said.

Nu.

Nu, nu, nu.

Shipping.

It was the first native conversation Ted had understood in two years, and he’d felt wise for it. Finally wedded to this place and this planet.

Connelly had taken off the earpiece. He’d folded it carefully and tucked it among his vestments. Standing there before the mess tent, waiting for the shipment to come in, he’d looked Ted up and down, something in his eyes expressing a sudden sadness and understanding.

Then he’d looked at his officers and made a sudden, sharp cutting motion with his hand, a sound with his lips like “
Pssst
.” Without a sound, they stood and lit out, loping, for the infield.

He turned back to Ted. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry? For what?”

“Ten percent, Commander. Take it or leave it.”

And Ted, wise for one instant, had suddenly felt once again as though great and terrible things were happening just out of his view. He was seized with the dream fear again of something sneaking up on his blind side, disaster personified and reaching for him. “Wait,” he said. “Wait. Ten percent of what? What happened? Who were you talking to?”

Over Connelly’s shoulder, Ted saw Diane step out of the comms tent and begin waving her arms. Ted pulled the radio handset off his belt and stared at it. It was turned off. He’d done that last night so he wouldn’t be interrupted. He’d forgotten to turn it back on.

“Ten percent of our deal. As a courtesy, you understand. For letting us use the field.”

Above them, a white and shining speck began to glow and grow larger. Orbital delivery, going through its first blazing molt.

“Our deal was twenty percent,” Ted said.

“Yes. Ten percent of that. Yes or no.”

Aka
or
nu
.

“So, two percent, you’re saying. Two?”

“As a courtesy.”

“Wait. What happened? What’s…” Ted was fumbling with his radio. His fingers were frozen from the cold, clumsy with a sudden, fierce frustration. “Wait. Just let me…” When he finally got it switched on, it erupted with voices—controllers and pilots and a hundred different words he did not want to hear.

“The Akaveen,” Connelly said, his voice taking on a hectoring edge that Ted found unpleasant enough to want to hit him in the mouth, “the
free
Akaveen, mind you, not my troops—have just moved on Riverbend. Your planes have crossed into the highlands. Against orders, I suspect. Which is probably what all that yelling is about. As we discussed last night, NRI has been landing supplies behind the lines for the past five days. I tried to explain this to you, but—”

“You never said five days!”

“I didn’t know until just now. I knew that they were there, but my information, my lines of communication, have been less than perfect
lately. No one is sure any longer who is going to win this planet, and my informants—rightly, I should say—want to make sure they come out on the victorious side. There’s no profit in doing otherwise. Something we taught them, I’m sure.”

“So what are…” Ted stared at the radio barking and yelling in his hand. He felt a cloud muddling his vision, his plans.

“The Akaveen are going to be slaughtered at Riverbend,” Connelly continued. “The lines are going to collapse. And now, the Colonial Marines cannot possibly be far behind.”

“Okay, so then—”

“So two percent. I suggest you take it in food and water and decamp immediately,” Connelly said. “You have to get out, Theodore. Now. Scrub the mission, call in your exfiltration, and get out as quickly as possible. My units can cover you for a day, but no more.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hide. Burn my communications equipment. Cache all my gear. Wait until this all blows over. Then take my troops back into the field when everything quiets down. Can’t take more than a year.”

“A
year
.”

“I have a job to do, Commander. I have my men to think about. I don’t intend to let them down.” Connelly paused, looked skyward, straightened the mangy fur cape on his shoulders, and began to move away. “Two percent, then,” he said. “Food and water. I’ll have it saved out for you.” He shuffled his feet in the cold dirt. “Commander?”

Ted had said nothing. Connelly took a few steps, turned back. Looking at Ted standing dumbfounded with his radio in his hand, he seemed to reconsider.

“There is no exfiltration waiting for you, is there, Theodore,” he said.

“Of course there is,” Ted had lied. “Just have to call them.”

“Really?”

Ted had looked up. He’d looked Connelly in the eye. He would be damned before being shamed in front of this man, so he said, “Absolutely. Don’t worry about us. But there’s some time left. And I intend on using it to make those monkey motherfuckers regret ever leaving their little mud huts.”

Connelly stared at Ted. Around them, everyone was clearing the infield, looking up with hands shading eyes.

“Ten rifles,” Connelly said. “A thousand rounds of ammunition. All I can spare.”

And Ted had nodded distractedly. “If it’ll make you feel better,” he said. He, too, looked up and watched the cargo drop approaching, burning off its first drag chutes—low enough that they appeared to jerk and flare like wings of flame. There, then gone.

“Ted,” Connelly said.

Ted studiously did not look at him. Apparently, the man wasn’t done talking yet. “Do you have any idea how long this war has been going on between them? The natives?”

“No.” Ted watched the second parachutes deploy, billow for a second, then tear away. The container was dead on target. Someone up there really knew what they were doing. “Does it matter?”

“A thousand years, they’ve been fighting over this land. We are just an aberration. An eyeblink. One brief moment of magic and hope.”

And then Connelly had smiled again—an expression that, at first, Ted had thought looked all wrong on his face, like maybe he’d just learned how to do it and was still practicing. But there was something almost beatific about it, with depths of sadness and personal vision, of joy at being just where he was, glowing under the pall of disaster upon disaster. Connelly was a happy man and Ted could not stomach that at all. “No one is going to write songs about us when we’re gone.”

Ted shook himself. The conversation with Connelly he couldn’t get out of his head, but the man himself had vanished. He couldn’t think. He drew himself upright and debriefed Tommy Hill, grabbing him by the shoulder, listening without hearing his answers to any questions. Two squadron—Carter, Hill, and O’Day—had seen nothing. They’d been in the wrong position to see the action at Riverbend that’d just occurred, and had likely been too close to Southbend in the first place, flying against orders within sight of the walls. Ted no longer knew where he needed to send his planes to do good, only where he must ban to
keep them from harm. He hadn’t wanted anyone else dying here for no good cause. Danny Diaz had been bad luck. Morris Ross had been bad planning. He felt that, somehow, he should’ve known that was coming so it could’ve been avoided. Stork was luck again, only good. He had been terrified of doing anything, but now… Now he was only afraid of doing nothing. He was trying to encompass all the intelligence of an entire planet, all the possible plans of all his possible enemies, and to secure himself and his men against every one of them.

Once Connelly had walked off, Ted had run for the control tent. Captain Teague’s flight had been up near Riverbend. They’d seen things happening there, had reported back with the worst of all possible bad news: That the end was coming. That everything was worse than anyone had wanted to believe. He’d demanded silence from the controllers in the tent. He might’ve threatened them with his pistol, but wasn’t sure. That seemed extreme. He’d gotten back on the radio with Teague. “Just come home…”

He’d called all of the planes back in from their patrols. He’d felt that, if he just held out long enough, an idea would come to him. Some plan. Some scheme for turning it all around. His only responsibility, he’d thought, was to keep everyone alive until something told him what to do next. But things were happening now. The action was coming and time was running very short, so all he could hope was that the wisdom would come quickly.

Ted staggered again, turned out and away from the ruckus of planes and bodies moving to and fro and the pressure of motion all around him. After Captain Teague’s flight had landed, Ted had given orders that all planes be turned around for immediate flight upon landing, hoping that he wouldn’t need to send them out again but knowing that he probably would. This was it, he thought. Might be it. The beginning of the end. He’d spoken briefly with a god in whom he did not believe and asked for more time. Just a little. But he didn’t think his call had been received.

Ted stopped, briefly, on the close-cropped apron of the strip and took a breath. There were things that needed to be done now. There were orders he needed to give. He looked up into the sky, one hand shoved deep into the pocket of his uniform trousers and fingers wrapped around
his radio handset as he shaded his eyes with the blade of the other. And while anyone who saw him at that moment would’ve thought only that he was searching the skies for danger, for threats coming from unusual directions or, perhaps, the approach of planes that only he knew about, the truth was that Ted was only pinching himself through the pocket of his uniform and biting the inside of his cheek until it bled to keep from bursting into tears.