Грег Бир: The War Dogs Trilogy

Real nightmare batwing shit.

Our angels scree the swollen suit, just in case the dead soldier’s unit is still up for a chat. No luck. It’s long since self-wiped. Since we haven’t uplinked since the drop, and of course have not been briefed on recent engagements, we don’t know anything about these guys or why they are here. They must have arrived many sols before us—maybe weeks. Why? There weren’t supposed to be major operations before our arrival. Somebody’s had second thoughts since we left Earth. Maybe these guys were shipped out on fast frames, taking only a month or two rather than four… They left before us, and now they’re dead, and we don’t know anything about why they are here.

It’s getting tougher and tougher to stay focused.

At this point, we decide radio silence is stupid. Our only chance is to try to raise other Skyrines and hear if they’ve found something useful.

We split three different directions.

Only then do I see Engineering Sergeant Dan Johnson, DJ, waving his hands and descending a short slope made nasty by BB-sized pebbles. He manages to skitter down on his feet, then waves again and signs that he’s found a tent box. We greet him with shoulder slaps and real joy. His angel screes ours, and now we’re four instead of three.

“Anybody see sparkly?” DJ asks. “I saw sparkly coming down, above and outside.”

We all agree that we saw no sparkly. Sparkly is bad—it’s our term for space combat observed from a distance. Space frames and sticks being blown out of the sky.

“The puff was all fucked,” Kazak says resentfully. “How could you tell?”

“Well, I saw something ,” DJ insists, but he doesn’t push. We don’t even want to think about it. He’s found a tent box, he’s leading us to it. The box is up on Bridger’s pedestal. Craters on Mars often sit on rises caused by force of impact hardening the surrounding regolith, making them more resistant to erosion. Scientists call the rises pedestals, and this one is about two meters above the hardpan.

We’re starting to really wear down by the time we reach the box and do a walk-around. The box is at least a month old, probably also Russian or French, and still has fresh purple striping—no interference since it was dropped, no booby traps, and no germ needles to render it useless. We make damned sure of that. Safety and sanctuary. We may be in the middle of nowhere important, off course and ultimately doomed, but at least we’re good for the night, which is rolling over fast, and of course it’s going to be cold and dry.

Still, we’re about to sleep in a tent dropped for a dead squad. I’m not happy about that, but something similar happened on my last drop, and we all survived and took down something like sixty Antags—painted them on the sand from a couple of hundred meters. A good two weeks in the shit, and the nearest I’ve been to learning what an Antag looks like up close.

Bolts don’t leave much to autopsy after the fighting is done: cuplike pieces of helm filled with grayish skull-bits—no teeth; shreds of light armor and suit, big, wide sleeves and leggings filled with crumbling bone and charred spines. Backbones, maybe. Our gunny ignored the tissue but scooped up some of the fabric and tech and packaged it for return. We heard no more about it. It’s traditional in the Corps to keep grunts ignorant about who we fight, something about dehumanizing the enemy. Well, they ain’t fucking human to begin with.

DJ and Tak break the tent box’s seal. The stripes turn orange-pink and then brown—safe—and the tent inflates. It carries enough air to last the night, and because it’s made for five, maybe a few hours into tomorrow. Strapped in a bag outside, we find a case of MREs with sacks of water and six vials of vodka. The MREs consist of hard sausage (Finnish, the label says—probably reindeer) and tubes containing something like borscht. A feast. We stuff the vodka in our hip packs, keeping our eyes on the black sky while the tent grows and the sun drops.

We talk without butting helms, but can barely hear each other through the thin, thin air. Not that there’s much to say. The smudge on the horizon has not changed, other than turning a pretty shade of violet. It may only be a big dust devil. If so, the wind conditions out there have been stable for several hours.

I look higher, bending my neck to see the zenith. Much of the time the stars over the Red shine brighter and steadier than they ever do on Earth. Their beauty is lost on me. They judge. Worse, they send Antags. The stars are waiting for me to fuck up.

After we trigger and tune the sentinel, the tent is ready. We scoop dust in our gloves and fling it in slow plumes over the striped plexanyl to provide local color. Then we circle, pull short dusters from our thighs, and brush each other down, paying particular attention to wrinkles around our underarms and gear belts. Nobody wants to itch inside the tent all night, and nothing itches like fine Martian loess. We might not notice at first; six or eight hours after a drop, Cosmoline blocks itching and a lot of other sensations, so all seems smooth and cool and baby-powder sweet. During those hours I feel like a walking ghost or some other kind of disembodied asshole. But when sensation returns—and it always does—Mars dust can turn a miserable night on the Red into something truly special.

Assured that we are now relatively clean, one by one, we squeeze through the tent’s canal into our little womb, like babies in reverse. When we’re all in, and I’ve checked the seal and found it good, I crack my faceplate. Checker always takes first sniff. The tent air is okay, clean and cold. Like Russian steppes.

I’M BARELY AN hour into some crazy whimpering dream about mean kids when the tent wheeps intruder alert and we all jerk up, just as something slips through the entrance and plops down among us puppies. Beams flash. Kazak is loudly cursing in his eponymous patois. Then his beam illuminates a helm, a face—a human face—grinning like a bandit. Behind the faceplate, we recognize the broad nose, bushy unibrow, deep blue eyes, and somber, straight mouth.

“Shit, it’s Vee-Def,” Tak says. As we settle down, DJ passes Gunnery Sergeant Leonard Medvedev some water and an MRE.

Still all sergeants.

“Anybody get tactical?” Medvedev—Vee-Def—asks. As we dim our lights, the beams intersect a thin haze, and we realize there’s dust in the tent. Vee-Def entered without brushing down. A severe breach.

“Fuckup,” Kazak says.

“Nobody got tactical,” Tak says.

“Anybody see a sled come down?” Vee-Def asks.

That’s too stupid a question to answer. We’re here in a Russian tent.

“How many tents?” he asks.

“How many do you see?” Tak asks.

More quiet.

“Sticks were all fucked,” Vee-Def murmurs around a swig. His eyes are wide and scared. “I came down alone. Fucking puff was burning!”

“It’s supposed to burn, man,” DJ says.

“No, I mean there was sparkly and the sticks caught it. Looked like space frames, too. We may be all that’s left!”

We’re quiet for a few seconds.

“Bullshit,” Tak says.

“I saw it, too,” DJ reminds us, with a resentful glance.

Bad news takes a while to soak in when you’re out on the Red, because just a little bad news means you’re going to die, and this is a lot. Vee-Def feels the burn of bearing evil tidings. “I don’t like Finnish sausage,” he says, and offers around in pinched fingers a hard little tube of preserved reindeer.

No takers. We scratch ourselves with disdain.

Then Kazak starts giggling. “Is that your Tootsie Roll, man? Or you just glad to see us?”

It’s dumb and not very funny. But for the moment we’re warm, we’re scratching, we’re alive, and Vee-Def does what he does best, he sticks the sausage up his nose, or tries to, and then sneezes and snot comes out with the sausage and the sausage is good only for the family dog, which we were thoughtless enough to have left behind.