How Dark the World Becomes (27 page)

“Another good question. But the reason we were moving by rail is this is all non-secured air space. No atmospheric aircraft, and certainly no orbital shuttles, are safe coming down here. If there’s going to be a relief column, it will have to come overland.”

If?
I didn’t much like hearing that.

“Okay. Last question. Wataski, can you patch our embedded comms into your squad tacnet?” 

She shook her head.

“I need a platoon terminal to do it. No got. We’ll have to go with audibles.”

Audibles—a polite word for “shout over the noise of battle.” Well, it had worked for cave men, so I guessed it might work for us. Of course, a tacnet could have translated English to aGavoosh, or aHoka—or aPig Latin, whatever those MPs spoke. Absent that—and figuring that a running translation under fire wasn’t all that practical—tactical hand signals were probably going to be the order of the day.

I was a little rusty. Now, what was the tactical hand signal for “FUBAR”?

*   *   *

I crawled back and sat down next to my three charges and, because nothing gets by me, noticed right away that the group had grown to four. There were also four other Varoki youngsters clustered at a cautious distance, sizing up Barraki and Tweezaa—probably waiting until the grown-ups got their stuff over with so they could make contact between the two tribes.

Marfoglia was kneeling, sitting back on her feet, back straight, with both hands on her knees. She lifted one hand, turned the palm up, and gestured gracefully to the middle-aged Varoki sitting between Barraki and Tweezaa—the Gavaan-Varoki formal presentation of an important guest in one’s home. 

“This is the Honorable Bok e-Kavaa,” she said. 

The guy was late middle-aged, I’d guess, with a thick torso—the Varoki equivalent of a pot belly—and the reflective sheen of the skin on his head and hands was beginning to dull with age. He wore a torn and muddy civil uniform—closer to a suit, really, and with no insignia, but a common cut and color, in this case dark green. 

“Hey,
TheHon
,” I said. “How you doing?” 

Marfoglia frowned at me, but the Varoki paper pusher smiled faintly. 

“I am reminding myself how much better I am than so many of my colleagues. I am afraid that a good many of them out along the road are dead.”

I nodded. Good chance of it, although maybe the guys hitting us—whoever the hell they were—took some of them as hostages. Hostages for
what
, though? 

The Varoki private security guy who formed part of our small combat force walked past. He and
TheHon
exchanged a look,
TheHon
nodded and smiled to him, and the guard walked on and settled down next to another Varoki, also in civil green. That guy was a bit older than the security guy, near as I could tell, with alert eyes and an unmistakable air of authority. Apparently he rated his own bodyguard.

“Mr. e-Kavaa is the assistant to the
Cottohazz
Executive Council’s special envoy plenipotentiary for emergency abatement on K’Tok,” Marfoglia elaborated.

“That’s nice. That your boss over there?” I asked, nodding over at him, and
TheHon
looked at me oddly, but nodded.

“You . . . have met him before?” 

“Just putting two and two together. I’d say you and your boss are in the right place, pal. Any time you guys feel like abating
this
emergency, be my guest.”

He smiled ruefully, humor sparkling in his eyes.

I checked out my three people of interest. I already knew they’d come through the fight without a scratch, and by now they’d settled down as well as could be expected. 

Marfoglia still had my Hawker 10—“the big one”—stuck in the waist band of the white Navy slacks which—along with a white short-sleeved shirt with insignia removed—the
Fitz
’s astrogator had given her. Well, an hour ago they’d been white; crawling through muddy drainage ditches had left all of us pretty earth-toned, but she’d wiped off her face, pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and tucked her shirt in, so she actually looked tidy—at least by the standards of current company. 

I was getting to know her well enough to figure she was shaking like a leaf behind that façade of manners and duty, so I didn’t begrudge her the frowns of reproach. She hid her fears behind the niceties of form; I hid mine behind wise-ass remarks. Whatever gets you by. 

Barraki must have been scared, but he was doing a great job of pretending nonchalance. Marfoglia had dug a couple kotee-nut bars out of her pockets, and Barraki was eating one of them, looking around with curiosity but no apparent concern. When I looked close, though, I could see his eyes were darting back and forth from place to place, never staying put for more than a second or two, his ears twitching and turning restlessly. He was keeping it together, though, and that’s what counted. Maybe he’d taken some panic-control lessons from Marfoglia. He could have done worse.

Whatever gets you by.

Tweezaa had the other kotee-nut bar, but she was just holding it. She was eyes-wide scared, and although she wasn’t making a big deal about it, it was pretty clear she didn’t really care if anyone knew it, either. Strange little girl. So far as I could tell, she never said or did anything—or failed to say or do something—just to make an impression. It wasn’t that she didn’t care what other people thought or felt; she just didn’t seem to care what they thought or felt
about
her
. In my life, I have met a handful of people whose self-image had nothing to do with the reflection they cast in the eyes of others. All of those people were very old, except for Tweezaa. 

Strange little girl.

It was up to me to say something to put them a little more at ease, but I wasn’t comfortable saying everything was going to be swell when I couldn’t be sure it would be. They’d have to take what comfort they could from the plain old truth.

“Okay, here’s the deal. We don’t know who’s shooting at us or why, but we’re secure for now in this house. So far all we’ve seen are AWiGs—
assholes with guns—
and we can handle them
.
If they bring up an armored vehicle or a tac missile or something, it might get interesting, but I doubt they’ve got anything that heavy—or that we’re important enough to them to commit it—but if they do, we’ll have to improvise. But for now, we’re snug. In about two hours we’ll be able to contact Captain Gasiri in orbit, and we’ll see what she can work out.”

“Are they insurgents?”
TheHon
asked.

I shrugged. 

“Ya nya znayu. Ya toureest.”

He looked at me blankly.

“I don’t know; I am a tourist,”
I translated. It was a wonderfully useful phrase, the perfect answer to almost any question. Other than yes, no, and obscene insults, it was about all I knew of the Old Language. 

“Have the soldiers been able to contact any
Cottohazz
ground elements?”
TheHon
asked. 

I shook my head. What was his real name? I’d already forgotten, so
TheHon
would have to do.

“Nobody has a broadcast transmitter along, just tight beam. Thing is, all the relay towers are down and the communication satellites are off-line, so we’re stuck with line of sight.”

“But what can they do to help from orbit?” Marfoglia asked.

I didn’t want to oversell this, so I thought about it for a second or two before answering.

“Well, the big thing is they can copy the ground forces—those three MP cohorts—on our location and situation, and then hopefully those guys can arrange an overland rescue. They can also drop us supplies, which we’ll need if we’re going to be out here for a while.”

“You did not mention the Mike Force,”
TheHon
said. So he knew at least something about what was what, which was understandable given his job description. I mean, when it comes to “emergency abatement,” not much tops a shit-load of Marines dropped from orbit. 

“I wouldn’t count on Captain Gasiri dropping her last reserves for a rescue mission,” I answered.

“What is a Mike Force?” Barraki asked. 

“Mike stands for
Meteoric Insertion Capable
,” I answered. “The Mikes come down from orbit red-hot in individual reentry capsules.”

His eyes lit up with recognition.

“Oh, yes, the
Azza-kaat
! I have seen vids of them. Have you ever dropped from orbit, Sasha?”

I laughed.

“Not a chance, pal. Not on a bet.”

TWENTY-TWO

What is the essential prerequisite of leadership? 

Is it brains? I don’t think so. I’ve known some real dumb-asses that folks would follow anywhere, and I’ve known brainy guys that could hardly get their shadows to tag along. Don’t get me wrong; anyone I follow I’d rather be smart than stupid, but it’s not smart that makes them a leader, is it? 

Being honest with your people, giving them a fair shake, sharing their load, looking out for them—those are all great qualities to
have
in leaders, but they don’t
make
leaders. 

Courage. 

The essential prerequisite of leadership is courage. 

Any situation which requires leadership—as opposed to management, which is an entirely different animal—is by its nature fraught with fear. That’s why people need leadership—to get them through a fearful situation. And nothing messes with your ability to make clear, rational decisions like fear. So anyone who in a fearful situation can stare down that fear, and keep their mind clear enough to make good decisions, is a leader. Those folks aren’t leaders because I say so; they’re leaders because that’s who people follow. 

Of course, what goes along with that is that people who have the sort of delicate egos and fragile self-images which make them yearn to be hailed as great leaders naturally spend a lot of their lives drumming up business by trying to make people afraid. 

Once the
Fitz
came over the communication horizon that evening, Gasiri had about ten minutes to make a decision, unless she wanted to wait until the next transit to do something, and a lot could happen in those extra hours. Ten minutes—and that was stretching it. Wait any longer and the Mikes would overshoot us. 

Even though the Mikes are supposed to be ready to rumble on a moment’s notice, even though all the ammo and gear was preloaded, even though you could get them in the capsules, pop them out, then do a quick briefing with downloaded intel and maps while they were in the early part of their descent, ten minutes still doesn’t leave you any Murphy-margin. There was no way for Gasiri to know whether she could even recover her Mikes once they were down, given how fluid the situation was getting, and there was no time to gather more information, think things through, or even get anyone else’s ideas. 

Eighteen minutes after the
Fitz
broke the comm horizon, we could see the first bright streaks as the Mike capsules hit atmosphere. 

That’s courage. 

*   *   *

Not that we had time to leisurely enjoy the overhead light show. Once we got the word that the Mikes were coming down, we were, as the saying goes, “all asses and elbows.” Up until then, we’d been hunkered down in the house. Now we needed to move our shooters out and either secure a drop zone for the Mikes or, failing that, at least figure out how hot the reception was going to be.

We left the two linguistically challenged MPs behind as rear security and moved out in two squads of four shooters each, each squad with one of the two Marines as a comm link and one of the two officers for adult supervision. For firepower each team had two of the RAG-19s and two gauss pistols. My team was Fong-Ramirez, Wataski, the envoy’s bodyguard, and me. SOP was for the command and control element—Fong-Ramirez and Wataski—to bring up the rear, with us two expendable guys up front to trigger ambushes and booby traps and stuff like that. It made sense; I was just ten years out of practice at being expendable. 

How expendable was I? Well, Wataski relieved me of two more magazines and all of my grenades, if that tells you anything. 

In return, she gave me a snooperball. You roll it into a room, and its cameras, mikes, and seismics capture everything in all those different directions as it rolls, while its internal locomotor keeps it rolling in programmed patterns, like a purposeful Mexican jumping bean. The smart feed sorts all that wildly moving, spinning imagery into a stable 3D video display in the helmet visor of the scout. I still had Private Coleman’s helmet, but had the feed patched into Wataski’s display as well. All those images ghosted onto the visor can be disorienting unless you’re used to it, and I was definitely rusty. I fell on my face twice trying to walk while the snooperball display was running, and cracked my shin hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.

You get away from something for a while, you start feeling nostalgic about it. It’s good to be reminded that, fond memories and colorful tattoos notwithstanding, the Army really did suck. Not the guys I served with; I loved them, still do—even the assholes, maybe especially the assholes, because they needed it more, and if you’ve been there, you understand that. So I love those guys. But the Army—the thing itself—that’s a different story. 

The two teams moved in opposite directions, moved out one block, cleared and secured the buildings along the way as quickly as we could, and then swept counterclockwise, so the two teams were always going in different directions. Once we each did our half-circle, we moved out another block and then swept around again, making wider and wider sweeps each time. It was a good quarter-and-sweep routine for as few people as we had, and it had to be Wataski’s brainchild. I doubted that either Fong-Ramirez or Palaan had much small-unit tactical training, but the exec was smart enough to recognize good advice when he heard it. 

The sweep gave me a chance to size up Borro, the Varoki security guy I was paired with—the envoy’s bodyguard. He knew his stuff, and he was sizing me up, too. I could tell, and he could tell I could tell. It’s one of those deals where, after a while, you’d start laughing if the situation wasn’t so bizarre and dangerous. I chuckled anyway. He looked at me for a moment as if I was nuts, and then he shook his head and smiled, too.