John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“Rimpler won’t endanger the Colony. His survival instinct will prevent that.”

“He’s too fucking crazy to have a survival instinct. Shit, for all you know, you cut out that part of his brain.”

“I doubt it,” Praeger said. “Anyway, we’re going to prepare carefully to make sure the operation goes as swiftly as possible. He won’t have time to do much damage.”

Russ snorted. “Not much. Just the acceptable casualties, right? A few hundred people, maybe. But what’s that, after sacrificing everyone aboard RM17? What’s a few hundred more ?”

Praeger rocked back in his chair, smiling faintly, unaffected. “Take Russ, here, to detention,” he told the guards. “He’s no longer Chief of Security. He’s unemployed now.”

“Yes, sir.”

There were two of them. Big, confident, quiet. Russ went between them down the hall, passive. But at the core he buzzed and shook, like Stedder dying.

They walked past his office. Russ stopped. “Any objection if I stop in, just send a note out on my line to let ’em know I’m out of commission? I had some meetings set up, and I don’t want to hang anyone up.”

The guards were mirror-helmeted, as they always were when they were busting someone. But their body language spoke hesitation. They turned to one another and spoke on their helmet radios, without external volume. Then one of them nodded. “If it’s quick.”

If he’d been anyone else but their former boss…

He nodded, palmed his office door; the door slid aside and he went in. The guards waited politely outside. The light came on, and Russ sat at the console, typed out a quick message to Faid—a message he was instructed to take to Kitty Torrence.

He sent the message, then he went outside, and they took him away and locked him up.

There was no one around, but Torrence felt closed in. It was dark out, but Torrence felt as if bright lights were shining on him.

He and Danco were the point of Steinfeld’s assault, moving up the cracked, one-lane road, a quarter of a mile inland from their beachhead on the rocky shore of Crete. The assault teams were in four units of nine each, moving toward the Second Alliance Post Seven on foot. They were moving in a fairly tight column now; when they reached the outer defenses of the post, they were to split into four squads, each with its own fire mission, for the attack on Surveillance Post Seven. Torrence and Danco were at the head of the column, each carrying an auto assault rifle.

The darkness was thick on the ground, and in the olive orchard to the right and left; the olive trees were shadows in shadows, their tops faintly glazed by starlight.

It was a mild, moonless night, windless, cool but not cold. “It’s so damn quiet, Danco.” Torrence whispered. “Not even crickets.”

He looked over his shoulder and could just barely make out the man coming behind them in the column. Not a man: it was Lila. There was supposed to be someone beside her. He wasn’t there. Torrence dropped back beside Lila.

“Where’s Karakos?” Torrence asked softly.

“He said he was going to the rear to speak to Steinfeld.”

Something out to the right caught his eye. Torrence stared into the darkness of the olive orchard. There: a small red star, just a wink of minute light, and then it was gone. As if hastily extinguished. A match. Someone lighting a cigarette in the orchard in the middle of the dark night. Someone stupid.

Torrence hissed, “Danco! Lila—freeze where you are!” The word went down the line; everyone stopped moving. He took his rifle in his right hand; with his left he put on his headset. “Squad One to Four, do you copy?”

A crackle. Steinfeld’s voice: “Torrence? What’s the delay, everyone’s stopped…”

The air split open, humming. Bullets ripped it open. Muzzle flashes alternated in the orchard, bringing the thud and rattle of gunfire. Lila screamed. Someone else behind them yelled in pain. Torrence felt something smack his left hand and he spun, lost his headset, staggered; and suddenly his hand was slick with wet warmth. A wave of dizziness and nausea whipped through him. He went down to his knees and shouted unnecessarily, “Ambush—we’ve been ambushed. Pull back!” He tried to take his rifle in both hands, but his left hand was numb, like there was a lump of frozen meat between his wrist and the gun; he couldn’t hold it up that way. So he planted his left knee on the ground (the air whining, humming as rounds whipped past him), propped the rifle barrel on his right knee, fired from the hip into the orchard, spraying at the muzzle flashes, probably not hitting anything, wanting to suppress them so the others could get back (wanting to run, his bowels vised with fear). He emptied the magazine—just as he saw a shape loom up in front of him.

He dropped the rifle, fumbled for his pistol—but it was Danco.

“Torrence, what you doing, come on!” Then the two of them were up. Torrence stumbling along behind Danco, feeling a stab of guilt even through the throbbing ache traveling up his arm and the nausea and fear: Left my rifle behind. We don’t have enough guns. But the air was still flying apart, humming with invisible bees; bees whose stings killed and maimed.

Torrence almost fell across Lila. Lying sideways across the road (it was funny, he could see better now, maybe it was some adrenaline reaction).

Torrence said, “Danco, it’s Lila…”

Danco’s reply was lost in the rattle of gunfire and someone’s scream.

He bent and found her arm, felt it move under his fingers. She was alive. He gripped her upper arm with his intact right hand, tried to lift her. It was hard. He was already weak from blood loss.

“Danco!”

Danco cursed but took her other arm. Between them they half dragged, half carried her to the ditch that paralleled the road. They stumbled down into the ditch, four feet deep, used it for partial cover as they dragged her through the darkness, back toward the sea. Stopping so Danco could put a belt tourniquet on Torrence’s left arm—the tourniquet, after a few moments, hurt more than the wound. And they stopped again so Torrence could vomit.

They went on, carrying Lila, coming across three more bodies, each completely inert, slipping in puddles of blood more than once. Steinfeld had set up protective-fire units here and there down the road to try to cover their retreat; they’d fire a few bursts, retreat a few steps, go into position, fire a few more bursts…

Torrence felt a wave of weakness kick the pins from under him; he stumbled and fell to his knees. Lila drooping to the ground between him and Danco. “I can’t carry anyone,” he muttered, disgusted with himself.

In broken syllables filtered through the gunfire, Torrence heard Willow shouting at Carmen to get back to the beach.

Danco yelled, “Willow! Are you hit?”

Willow scuttled up to them, Carmen beside him, ignoring him when he told her to go back. “It’s Lila, she’s alive,” Torrence said. Surprised at how hard it was to talk. Such a small wound, a shot to the hand, funny how it could make you feel.

Carmen and Danco took Lila, and feeling weightless now, Torrence trotted on ahead, back toward the beach. Behind, the gunfire continued but more sporadically now.

Once he paused and held his injured hand up to silhouette it against the sky. Two fingers were gone. The little finger and the fourth finger. Stumps a quarter of an inch above the palm. His stomach lurched. He went on.

Somehow his pistol was in his right hand. Someone was running at him, and he raised the pistol, then lowered it, recognizing the bearish silhouette. They crouched down to talk. “Steinfeld… where’s Karakos?”