How Dark the World Becomes (30 page)

“You agree?” he asked after a while.

“No.”

“I am surprised. Surprised and disappointed that you would put revenge ahead of your responsibility.”

I turned and looked at him. I knew that Borro was watching us, so I didn’t make any threatening moves, because there was no point in risking a gunfight here in the warehouse, and I needed stuff from
TheHon
anyway. But aside from that, I wasn’t in a very good mood.

“Listen, you fat fucking lizard, I liked that kid Fong-Ramirez a lot, but I know what my responsibilities are, and they aren’t to ‘all these people’ around here. They are to exactly three people, and you aren’t one of them, so don’t waste your time trying to play me. 

“I’m getting those kids out of here. There are some things I need if I’m going to pull it off. Are you going to help me get those things? Yes or no.”

A lot of emotions struggled for control of his face as he sat there, but eventually acceptance triumphed over resentment.

“What is it that you need?”

“A good set of maps, and the best current intel on the local military situation. And I need it downloaded into this.” I held up Private Coleman’s helmet.

“Is that all?” 

“Nope. The Marines have Picketwire sensors scattered all over the town—I put a couple of them out myself. The Sammies will have a transport park somewhere in the town, and the Picketwire system should have identified it. I need to know where it is.”

He studied me for a moment.

“You have a plan?” 

“I got a notion, which I think I can parlay into an idea, that with luck I can bootstrap into a plan.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Very well. I will get you what you need. Borro and I will accompany you.”

“Nope.”

I started to tell him why, but he beat me to the punch.

“Of course not,” he said. “Why would you endanger your lives by traveling with me, when I am possibly the most sought-after target of the local officials? And why make your party any larger than it needs to be? Better to travel in a small group, and attract less attention. I could tell you that I won’t get you the information you need unless you take us along, but that would be a lie—an obvious bluff. Instead I will say three things.

“First, the local officials do not know that I am alive. They will likely find out eventually, but they do not know yet, and that will give us some time.

“Second, although I may be of little use to you, Mr. Borro is quite capable. You will need another experienced . . . operative, I think.

“Third, it is my understanding that while Dr. Marfoglia speaks aZmataan, she is not as conversant with it as she would like. Both Borro and I are fluent, and Borro’s accent is good enough to pass as native. 

“Finally, your small group will
not
go unnoticed, because there are no Humans on K’Tok. You and Dr. Marfoglia will be jarringly out of place, no matter where you go. Two adult Varoki will make your party less conspicuous, not more so.”

“That’s four things,” I said, “not three.”

He tilted his head to the side. 

I thought about it for a little while, but there wasn’t that much to consider. Everything he’d said had been right on the money, and I’m not one to cling to a losing hand out of stubbornness or pride. 

“Have you talked this over with Borro? I asked.

“No. I had not even considered it until I realized you had an escape plan in mind.” 

“Well, he’s going to shit bricks when he hears this. Even if the deal makes sense from my point of view, it really stinks at his end. In terms of keeping you alive, we are nothing but trouble.”

“Mr. Borro will follow my orders.”

“Yeah, that’s why I shudder at the thought of VIP security as a career. You people hire guys like Borro and me to keep you alive, then you do whatever you feel like and leave it up to us to keep all the balls in the air, as if we’re supermen. Marfoglia may be a pain in the ass, but when it comes to security, she does what I tell her.”

“Then you are a fortunate man,” he said, and smiled.

“You think this is funny? Okay. Here’s
my
condition. If you two come with us, I am in charge, one hundred percent. Borro is number two if something happens to me. Then Marfoglia, then the
kids
, then you. You understand? You have resigned as potentate, effective immediately.”

“Plenipotentiary,” he corrected me.

“Well, you’re just baggage now, pal. If we get you out of this alive, you can get back to the noble calling of screwing up entire planets, but meantime, you’re the cook and dishwasher.”

He frowned at that.

“That is an unfair assessment,” he said. “My responsibility is to correct difficulties, not create them.”

“Sure. You’re from the government and you’re here to help. And let me tell you, you’re doing a hell of a job. While you’re sitting here, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. The war between the Sammies and the uBakai—you got a dog in this fight?”

He frowned in confusion.

“I do not understand.”

“What nationality are you?” 

“Ah. I see. Yes. I am uKootrin—in that sense I do not have a dog in this war.”

“In
that
sense,” I repeated. “But in some other sense?”

“In some other sense, we all—even you—have a dog in the war.”

Trust a government guy to give you an answer which was probably truthful, but definitely not very satisfying. I let him off the hook, though, and shooed him away so I could go back to figuring out our next move. I had the start of a plan that at least had a chance of not getting us all killed. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one. Jarheads can surprise you once in a while.

*   *   *

“We’re going to pretend to go along with their deal, but when they send the trucks, we’re going to hit them instead. Hit them hard, then grab the trucks and head west.”

It was an interesting plan—flawed, but interesting. I thought it was even more interesting that Wataski was explaining it to me. 

Wataski had never developed what you’d call a fondness for me in our brief association, and yet here she was, explaining the plan. Remember what I said about paying attention to people? What does this tell you about Wataski’s state of mind? She didn’t need my permission, but she wanted my opinion. Why? 

Because decapitation attacks work. That’s what this had been—a nice, surgical decapitation of the unit. The NCOs weren’t dummies, but they were NCOs. What NCOs do is execute a mission. That’s their job. Give them a mission, they’ll execute the hell out of it. But deciding what the mission ought to be—that’s not their job. And if you make them change mental gears this quick and this hard . . . well, that’s why decapitation attacks work.

So the NCOs had a plan, but they were uncertain about it—uncertain enough that one of them was floating it past me, a civilian—and as far as she knew, my only claim to fame was that I kept my head when the flechettes started flying. So that’s the first thing it told me about Wataski’s state of mind—she was uncertain.

But the second thing it told me was she wasn’t insecure about her own authority. If she had been, she wouldn’t have asked my opinion, because it might have looked like weakness. But she knew who she was, she knew who I was, and she didn’t really give a damn what I thought of her. She just wanted to know what I thought of the plan. 

I brought up the map
TheHon
had snagged for me on my helmet display. We were about three hundred klicks west of T’tokl-Heem, and almost twice as far from the uBakai colonial border due north, quite a bit farther from Haampta, the uBakai colonial capital almost due west of us. The map showed a lot of jungle-covered mountains to the south and to the northwest, some prairies and scattered hills to the west, and jungle-covered lowlands most other directions. Jungle, jungle, jungle. Didn’t these people have farms? What the hell did they eat? Then I remembered the bubble-covered greenhouses I’d seen out the window of the maglev, that and the buildings with all the plumbing fixtures that shouted hydroponics. The leather-heads were growing all their stuff artificially. It was a good thing the maglev conked out where it did—this settlement was in one of the few fairly good-sized prairies around—ideal drop zone for the Mikes.

When I cranked the magnification on the map, it showed a thin trace of roads and trails through the jungle, connecting a handful of small, scattered settlements. Not only was there a lot of jungle, there were a lot of little rivers and streams, too—not big enough to navigate, but big enough to be a pain to get across, and I was willing to bet that a lot of the jungle lowlands were swamps with overhead canopy. Swell. There weren’t a whole lot of different ways to skin this particular cat, it was beginning to seem. I’d looked at it a dozen times already, before Wataski buttonholed me, but it gave me something to look at while I came up with an answer.

“Sounds better than anything else I’ve heard,” I said, and that was—strictly speaking—the truth. After all, I hadn’t
heard
my own thoughts.

She looked at me, and I think she suspected that there might be more to that statement than just the obvious meaning.

“So. No suggestions?” she asked, eyes boring right through me. 

If the Marines went due west, they’d be a great diversion for us, because we sure as hell weren’t going that direction. They’d take the other civilians along, and there was a good chance the bad guys wouldn’t spring to the crowd being a little thin. No one would notice us, because the Marines would keep making lots of noise—until they were all dead. All we had to do was break away in the confusion and head the right direction. Piece of cake.

I hadn’t told the kids the plan yet. I looked over at Tweezaa talking with four other Varoki children, survivors of the massacre. I’d met them . . . hadn’t meant to, hadn’t wanted to, but had. Two of them were missing their folks—probably dead out in a ditch by the road. Tweezaa looked up, from ten meters away, looked in my eyes, and from that serious, accusing stare I could tell she knew exactly what I was thinking. She reached out and took the hand of the little girl next to her, her eyes still locked on mine.

And then I closed my eyes and sighed, because I am foolish and soft and unprofessional, and I know it, but I can’t seem to do anything about it. 

“You taking all the civilians with you?” I asked Wataski.

“That’s the job,” she answered.

I nodded. 

“Okay, here’s my opinion. Actually, three opinions for the price of one.

“First opinion: there’s no magic solution that’s going to bewilder the bad guys and get us all out of this in one piece. No matter what we do, most of us are going to end up dead, and you may as well get your head around that. There are too many of them, and they’re trying too hard to kill us.”

I paused, and a flicker of fear danced across her eyes. She hid it well, but she wasn’t some emotionless killing machine, any more than any of the other Marines were. They were kids—well-trained kids, but still kids. They had nice long lives still ahead of them, and none of them were ready to lie down and die just yet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really up to them, and Wataski was starting to realize that. 

“Second opinion: north is better than west. The jungle closes in tight and the roads have triple canopy overhead cover. It won’t make it impossible to track you, but it will make it harder. And it’s closer to uBakai territory and their air-defense umbrella.”

There was another advantage of heading north, but she didn’t need to know it yet.

“Third opinion: if you stick together, you will all die very quickly.”

“You’re talking as if you won’t be with us,” she said right away.

“That’s right. My people and I are going our own way as soon as possible. You better start thinking along those lines as well.”

“Bullshit,” she spat back. “We’re trained to fight and survive as a team. That’s our best asset.”

“Then do it,” I answered. “No skin off me. But the Sammies have tac air and artillery rocket systems with area kill submunitions. Right now we’re in too close to their strikers for them to hit us. But once we all break away, if you guys stay together as one big target, they will flatten twenty hectares of jungle just to make sure you are good and dead.”

She thought about that for a minute or two, scowling and chewing on the inside of her cheek, and I could tell it was sinking in. Then she looked back at me.

“And you think you’re just going to sneak away while nobody’s looking?” she asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Nah. I figure I can count on you Marines for a violent and noisy diversion. Break things and hurt people, right? It’s sorta in your DNA.”

“Oo-rah,” she growled, and she smiled a little, although as smiles go it was a pretty sour one. 

Then without another word she turned and walked back toward the other Marines. After all, she had what she wanted from me, and I got the feeling Wataski wasn’t really big on idle chitchat.  

TWENTY-FOUR

A different Marine sergeant came around to fill us in on the final plan. He introduced himself as Marty Gomez—short, dark, stocky, and broad-faced, with a lot of Native American blood showing in him. I got the feeling that he’d emerged as the group leader, just the way he talked to us—respectful but confident, serious but relaxed and friendly, all the things that make people comfortable with listening and following. 

There were four squads of Marines down, although one of them was banged up and they’d folded Wataski’s detail into it, with her taking over. Wataski’s improvised squad was going to make a lot of noise—“duplicate the fire signature of a platoon” was how Gomez put it—while the other three squads hijacked enough transport to lift us all out. Then everyone would disperse, the basic unit being a single vehicle and its occupants. Gomez looked square at me when he explained that part, which I guess was his way of saying they’d decided I wasn’t a total asshole.

When the Mikes came down, the
Fitz
also dropped seven loaded RTM “twelve-packs.” The RTMs—Remotely Triggered Munitions—were short-range artillery rockets. They were dropped in modules of twelve rockets—hence the nickname—and they went inert as soon as they landed and deployed, hopefully hidden by the surrounding jungle and brush. The Marines could call them in singles, pairs, or pretty much any multiples up to a twelve-rocket salvo, and they’d either fly a pre-plotted course to a fixed target point or home on a laser reflection. They were the closest thing the Marines had to artillery actually down here on the dirt, and Gomez planned to fire all of them in a box barrage around the settlement as soon as we cleared the perimeter. That should slow up the pursuit.