John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

It was quiet. The enemy had moved into position, probably deploying seeker missiles, maybe light artillery.

Steinfeld’s command group squatted on its haunches, mouths and nostrils trailing steam as they talked, hands tucked in their armpits for warmth.

Steinfeld saying, “…the extractor makes it that way. The only course we can take from here. We hit them with everything, we force their hand…”

Steinfeld hesitated, his mask of calm slipping. It hurt Torrence to see it. He relied on Steinfeld’s courage, his seeming indefatigability. But being cornered one too many times had worn Steinfeld down.

Steinfeld looked at the ground, and when he looked up at them again, his gaze was broken. He couldn’t look directly at any of them. He said, “I must insist that you kill me the moment the line breaks. Be sure to shoot me in the head, several times. A shot to the body won’t necessarily…” He cleared his throat.

Levassier turned away, cursing in French.

Torrence felt leaden. Like he’d never get warm again. They’d patched him up, but he was suffering from blood loss, dizzy when he moved too quickly. It didn’t matter, obviously. He looked up toward the line at the edge of the amphitheater area around the cave mouth—a woman there, an NR Guerilla, toppled over backward. They heard the distorted crack of the gunshot a half second later, echoing shuh-shuh-shuh through the twisted corridors of rock. The woman lay on her back, staring sightlessly, a bullet hole in her forehead. It was Angeline, someone he scarcely knew. Steinfeld was bellowing orders, and Torrence automatically went into position with the others. Claire came up beside him, with the black woman, Lila, and they crouched behind a block of stone the size and shape of an overturned credit-transfer booth.

Ahead, the crooked corridors of rock were sunk in shadow; dark, hunched figures shifted there. Lila said, “We cannot see them. Their uniforms are colored like the rock.” She took a flare gun from a pack lying on the ground beside her, dropped a shell in it, fired it; the shell arced up, down, and splashed the gray dimness with sparks and the blue-white dazzle of burning magnesium. Someone screamed, and even Claire smiled at that. Burn, you bastard, because you’re going to kill me.

And then they saw something else in the light of the flare.

Torrence remembered snorkeling once, off the coast of Florida, seeing a shark nosing slowly toward him among the coral formations. That’s what this thing looked like, from here. The shark in the undersea maze had swum past, ignoring him. This one wouldn’t do that.

It was a seeker missile, moving slowly—not much more than hovering in place, just drifting forward as it picked out a target—held up by jets on its underside, its tail rocket dormant, waiting for the missile’s micro computer to make a decision, wavering in and out of the flare light behind it. The self guided drone was a sleek thing of shiny chrome, a sensing grid on its nose looking for heat in human-body outline. Nosing this way, that. Why was it taking so long?

Maybe it was confused by the still flickering flare, reflected from the cold rocks. Soon it’d pick out the heat from a group of people, though, and it’d find its way—

One moment the self-guided missile was drifting in and out of shadow, almost absently; a split second later, rattlesnake flash, it struck, impacting with the top forward edge of the cratered boulder where Sortonne and Sahid had been… Had been.

Torn outlines of the two men were flung from the fireball; dolls from which some sadistic kid had torn the hands and heads. Warm droplets spattered Torrence’s cheek. Chunks of rock flew from the blast, and a small boulder smacked meatily down onto Levassier’s shoulder—smashed down himself now, shoulder crushed, upper arm nearly mangled away, hanging by shreds. Steinfeld was running to him, removing his belt for a tourniquet. Torrence felt blood—Sortonne’s? Sahid’s?—running down his cheek toward his mouth. He smeared it away with the back of his hand so he wouldn’t have to taste the blood of other NR. Blood already cold to touch.

Shouts of outrage from his fellows; someone sobbing; spastic volleys of gunfire; two more on the line fell back, one gut-shot, shit from his ruptured intestines adding its ugly tang to the iron taste of blood in the air and the scratchy tang of gun smoke; the writhing as a rift through his neck pumped out his life. There was no helping him without too much risk, they had to ignore his frantic hand signals— Help me!

Try not to see him, look down the sights of your gun…

“Don’t shoot without a clear target!” Steinfeld yelled.

NR firing slowed and stopped. Echoes and then quiet. Torrence looked for the enemy and saw no one…

Motion. Gleaming metal motion. Another seeker. The sight freezing his bowels as it nosed into a band of wan sunlight, sniffing for group heat.

Torrence squeezed off a three-shot burst at the seeker, hoping to detonate it while it was still a hundred yards away. Glimpsed sparks as the rounds ricocheted from stone. Anyway, it was well armored, you’d have to hit it precisely, squarely, in the nose, almost impossible at this range. Try again—no, wait!

Claire had taken something from Lila, was up and running ahead of them, toward the missile.

“Claire!” Torrence heard himself shout.

She was bending beside Sortonne’s body, lifting it up, her hands under its armpits, her face twisted. What the fuck was she doing? Recovering bodies? Now?

The seeker missile was drifting closer, its tail rocket beginning to show flame as it picked out a target. Any second it would lance out, blow two or three or five of them to shreds.

Claire had set up Sortonne’s body so it leaned on a boulder. She fired the flare gun into it and turned to run.

The body’s chest erupted with the burning flare.

The missile sensed the flare heat, saw the body outline; the heat more than enough for a group. It streaked to the decoy, exploding it along with bits of boulder. Still running, Claire stumbled, caught in the shockwave or by shrapnel, fell flat, skidding. Torrence shouted something and vaulted over the boulder, ran to her, picked her up in his arms… she was heavier than she should have been; his legs were wobbly. He felt a stickiness on the back of his legs; he’d started bleeding again. Someone, maybe Steinfeld, was shouting to him to let her lay and get under cover. But he staggered back to the low boulder with her, the others laying down suppressive fire to give him cover.

He laid her on her back behind the stone. Bullets ripped the air overhead. His ears ached from the gunfire noise of the guerrillas, just to his left. Claire’s eyes were open, moving. Alive. But registering nothing.

A tympanic roll announced the tons of killing machine suddenly blocking out the sky overhead, a machine giant’s voice booming shakily through the thudding. copter blades, “ If you surrender, you will not be killed. If you surrender…” The words were shattered by light machine-gun fire as someone opened up at the copter; it returned fire with its miniguns, and the machinegunner screamed. All the time Torrence was looking at Claire’s face. Was she hit? Internal bleeding?

“Claire?”

Danco and Lila were shouting something at him. “More choppers!” someone yelled, and something more in French. He looked up and saw a group of large brown choppers moving in, guns alongside firing. Red stars on the helicopter’s doors. New-Soviet choppers. The New-Soviets were involved now. Why? He didn’t really care.

His eyes stung from dust in the rotor backwash. “Claire…?”

A shell burst threw bushels of the stony ground into the air somewhere behind him and slapped him down with the hot ripple of its blast, sending a single sharp ringing tone through his head as he fell sprawling across Claire. Am I hit? Is she hit?