T. McCarthy - The Legionnaires

He opened one eye. “Reporter?”

“Yep. Stripes .”

“Where’s your camera?”

I shrugged. “Not allowed one. Security. It’s gonna be an audio-only piece.”

Chappy frowned, as if I couldn’t be a real reporter since I didn’t have a holo unit, thought for a moment, and then stood. “If you’re going to be the first reporter on the line, I guess we oughta give you something special. What size?”

I knew my size and told him. I’d been through Rube-Hack back in the States, all of us had. The Pentagon called it basic battlefield training, but every grunt I’d met had just laughed at me, and not behind my back. Rube. Babe. Another civilian too stupid to realize that anything was better than Kaz because Kazakhstan was another world, purgatory for those who least deserved it, a vacation for the suicidal, and a novelty for those whose brain chemistry was messed up enough to make them think it would be a cool place to visit. To see it firsthand. Only graduates of Rube-Hack thought that last way, actually wanted Kaz.

Only reporters.

“ Real special,” he said. Chappy lifted a suit from the pile and dropped it at my feet, then handed me a helmet. Across the back someone had scrawled FORGET ME NOT OR I’LL BLOW YOUR PUNK ASS AWAY. “That guy doesn’t need it anymore, got killed before he could suit up so it’s in decent shape.”

I tried not to think about it and grabbed an undersuit. “Where’s the APC hangar?”

He didn’t answer. The man had already slumped against the wall again, and didn’t bother to open his eyes this time, not even the one.

It took me a few minutes to remember. Sardines. Lips and guts stuffed into a sausage casing. Getting into a suit was hard, like over-packing a suitcase and then trying to close it from the inside. First came the undersuit, a network of hoses and cables. There was one tube that ended in a stretchy latex hood, to be snapped over the end of your you-know-what, and one that ended in a hollow plug (they issued antibacterial lube for that ) and the plug had a funny belt to keep it from coming out. The alternative was sloshing around in a suit filled with your own waste, and we had been told that on the line you lived in a suit for weeks at a time.

I laughed when it occurred to me. Somewhere, you could almost bet on it, there was a certain class of people who didn’t mind the plug at all.

Underground meant the jitters. A klick of rock hung overhead so that even though I couldn’t see it I felt its weight crushing down, making the hair on my neck stand straight. These guys partied Subterrene, prayed for it. You’d recognize it in Shymkent, when you met up with other reporters at the hotel bar and saw Marines—fresh off the line—looking for booze and chicks. Grunts would come in and the waiter would move to seat them on the ground floor and they’d look at him like he was trying to get them killed. They didn’t have armor on, not allowed in Shymkent, so the guys had no defense against heat sensors or motion tracking, and instinct kicked in, reminding them that nothing lived long above ground. Suddenly they had eyes in their back of their heads. Line Marines, who until that moment had thought R & R meant safety, began shaking and one or two of them would back against the wall to make sure they couldn’t get it from that direction. How about downstairs? Got anything underground? A basement? The waiter would realize his mistake then, and usher them into the back room to a spiral staircase, into the deep.

The Marines would smile and breathe easy as they pushed to be the first one underground. Not me, though. The underworld was where you buried corpses, and where tunnel collapses guaranteed you’d be dead, sometimes slowly, so I didn’t think I could hack it, claustrophobia and all, but didn’t have much choice. I wanted the line. Begged for a last chance to prove I could write despite my habit. I even threw a party at the hotel when I found out that I was the only reporter selected for the front but there was one problem: at the line, everything was down—down and ubertight.

The APC bounced over something on the tunnel floor and the vehicle’s other passenger, a corpsman, grinned. “No shit?” he asked. “A reporter for real?”

I nodded.

“Hell yeah. Check it.” I couldn’t remember his name but for some reason the corpsman decided to unlock his suit and slip his arm out—what remained of it. Much of the flesh had been replaced by scar tissue so that it looked as though he had been partially eaten by a shark. “Flechettes. You should do a story on that , got a holo unit?”

“Nah. Not allowed.” He gave me the same look as Chappy— What kind of a reporter are you? —and it annoyed me because I hadn’t been lit lately, was starting to feel a kind of withdrawal, rough . I pointed to his arm. “Flechettes did that ? I thought they were like needles, porcupine stickers.”

“Nah. Pops doesn’t use regular flechettes. Coats ’em with dog shit sometimes, and it’s nasty. Hell, a guy can take a couple of flechette hits and walk away. But not when they’ve got ’em coated in Baba-Yaga’s magic grease. Pops almost cost me the whole thing.”

“Pops?”

“Popov. Victor Popovich. The Russians.”

He looked about nineteen, but he spoke like he was eighty. You couldn’t get used to that, seeing kids half your age, speaking to them, and realizing that in one year God and war had somehow crammed in decades. Always giving advice as if they knew. They did know. Anyone who survived at the line learned more about death than I had ever wanted to and as I sat there the corpsman got that look on his face. Let me give you some advice…

“Don’t get shot, rube,” he said, “and if you do, there’s only one option.”

The whine of the APC’s turbines swelled as it angled downward and I had to shout. “Yeah? What?”

“Treat yourself .” He pointed his fingers like a pistol and placed them against his temple. The corpsman grinned, as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

Marines in green armor rested against the curved walls of the tunnel and everything seemed slippery. Slick. Their ceramic armor was slick, and the tunnel walls had been melted by a fusion borer so that they shone like the inside of an empty soda can, slick, slick, and double slick. My helmet hung from a strap against my hip and banged with every step so I felt as though it were a cowbell, calling everyone’s attention.

First thing you noticed on the line? Everyone had a beard except me. The Marines stared as though I were a movie star, something out of place, and even though I wore the armor of a Subterrener—one of Vulcan’s apostles—mine didn’t fit quite right, hadn’t been scuffed in the right places or buckled just so because they all knew the best way, the way a veteran would have suited up. I asked once, in Shymkent, “Hey Marine, how come you guys all wear beards?” He smiled and reached for his, his smile fading when he realized it had been shaved. The guy even looked around for it, like it had fallen off or something. “’Cause it keeps the chafing down,” he said. “Ever try sleeping and eating with a bucket strapped around your face, 24-7?” I hadn’t. Early in the war the Third had required their Marines to shave their heads and faces before going on leave—to keep lice from getting it on behind the lines—but here in the underworld the Marines’ hair was theirs, a cushion between them and the vision-hood that clung tightly but never quite fit right, leaving blisters on anyone bald.

Not having a beard made me unique.

A captain grabbed my arm. “Who the hell are you?”

“Wendell. Stars and Stripes , civilian DOD.”