Rules of Engagement
by Michael F. Flynn
I hadn’t much in the way of furniture; and once Angel had occupied two-thirds of the sofa, there was less of it to go around. Lyle, being slightly built, perched himself on the table, while Jimmy raided my kitchen and passed out bottles of Skull Mountain before squatting cross-legged on the floor. We all said what a coincidence, and long time no see, and what’ve you been up to.
It wasn’t quite like old times. A few years had gone by between us. They were long years; it didn’t seem possible they’d held only three-hundred-odd days each. The four of us had been different places, seen different sights; and so we had become different men than the ones who had known each other at camp. But also there was a curtain between me and the three of them. Every now and then, in the midst of some tale or other, they would share a look; or they would fall silent and they’d say, well, you had to be there. You see, they’d been Inside and I hadn’t; and that marks a man.
Angel had served with the 82nd against the Snakes; and Lyle had seen action against both the Crips and the Yoopers. Jimmy allowed as he’d tangoed in the high country, where the bandits had secret refuges among the twisting canyons; but he said very little else. Only he drank two beers for every one the others put down, and Jimmy had never been a drinking man.
They asked politely what I’d been up to and pretended great interest in my stories and news dispatches. They swore they read all of my pieces on the ©-Net, and maybe they did.
They didn’t blame me for it. They knew I’d as soon be Inside with them, suited-up and popping Joeys. The four of us had been commissioned power suit lieutenants together; had gone through the grueling training side by side. I still had the bars. I still looked at them some nights when the hurt wasn’t so bad, when I could think about what might have been without feeling the need for chems.
Talk detoured through the winter crop of Hollywood morphies and whether American could take Congress from Liberty next year, and how the Air Cav had collared El Muerte down in the panhandle, and have you seen Chica Domosan’s latest virtcheo. Angel and Lyle practically drooled when I told them I had the uncensored seedy; and they insisted on viewing it right then and there. I only had the one virtch hat, so they had to take turns watching. With the stereo earphones and the wrap-around goggs enclosing your head it was just like she was dancing and singing and peeling right there in front of you.
Afterwards, we talked Grand Strategy, shifting troops all over the continent, free of all political constraints and certain we would never hash it the way the Pentagon had. Doubt flowers from seeds that spend decades germinating; confidence is a weed that springs up overnight. And so youth gains in certitude what it lacks in prudence. It was no different back then; only, the stakes were higher.
Eventually, we spoke of our own personal plans. Lyle went how he was angling for an assignment down in the Frontera—“because that’s where the next big yee-haw’s going to be”—and Angel wanted nothing more than to hunt Joeys up in the Nations. White teeth split his broad, dark face. The rest of us counted the Nations as a nest of traitors and secessionists; but with Angel it was personal. Then Jimmy said, in that quiet voice of his, that he’d put in for a hoofer. We grinned and waited for the punch line, and when it didn’t come our smiles slowly faded. “I’m serious,” he said. “I won’t go Inside again.”
Angel looked shocked and Lyle’s face stiffened in disapproval; but I was the one who spoke up. “How can you say that, Jimmy? After what we went through together in camp? You’re a suit lieutenant, goddamn it!” Dismay pried me from the chair behind my cluttered workstation; or rather, it tried to. My legs betrayed me and I nearly cracked my head on the edge of the desk as I toppled.
The others were all around me, to lift me back up again. I swatted Jimmy’s hand away and let the Angel bear me up and set me back in my accustomed place. “Why’d you do that, man?” Lyle asked as he fussed the blanket around my waist. “You shouldn’t oughta do that.” Jimmy wouldn’t meet my eyes. Jimmy always blamed himself, but it was my idea. We’d just gotten our bars, we were celebrating, and that hog of Jimmy’s looked phatter and stoopider the more I drank. So what the hell. That was then.
“I get around all right,” I said to excuse myself. I could function. Most days, I could even walk. “Sometimes, the spasms—You know.”
They all said they knew; but how could they? You dream and you train for months and months and then in one drunken moment you throw it all away for a goddamned motorcycle ride. Power suits amplify the suit louie’s every move. A man can’t wear it if he suffers unpredictable seizures. As if to underscore my thoughts, my left leg began to spasm. If I’d been suited up, my walker would have toppled. Stress, the doctors all said. It was stress that brought it on; but what did they know?
I was barred by circumstance; but Jimmy planned to walk away. That made no sense. Who would give up a power suit if he didn’t have to? Angel was puzzled, too; and Lyle said, “Sometimes a guy gets syndrome and he just can’t take being Inside no more.” He was so damned understanding that Jimmy flushed and said how it wasn’t that at all; or at least, not exactly.
“You know how things stand up in the mountains,” Jimmy said. “I don’t suppose it’s much different with the Yoopers or the others, except maybe the terrain’s rougher. Straight up or down as often as not, and canyons pinched as tight as a preacher’s wife on Sunday. Officially, the whole area’s pacified; only someone forgot to tell the militias.”
“They are not ‘militias,’ suit lieutenant,” said Angel in a mock-official voice. “They are ‘bandits.’ ”
“I know that,” Jimmy told him. “We only call ’em ‘militias.’ Like you say ‘gangs’ when you pull urban duty.” He swigged his Skull and sat with the bottle dangling by its neck between his knees while he scowled at nothing. “The war’s platoon-size up there,” he said at last. “The regiment’s scattered in firebases all across God’s Country—only God ain’t home. The only time I ever saw my colonel was over the Lynx. We got our orders—when we got any orders at all—from the twenty-four. Otherwise, we were on our own.” He shook his head. “Pacified…”
“Who was your colonel?” Lyle asked.
“Mandlebrot. He was a sumbitch. Worried more about the cost of patrolling than whether Joey walked the line. When I took the platoon out, I used to sling the word off the twenty-four, then put my dish tech on arrest so I could say I never got the bounce-back telling me to stay put.”
Angel laughed. “That’s good. That’s bean. Wish I’d thought of that.”
That was the sort of hack Jimmy used to pull. Always by the book, but sometimes he wrote notes in the margins. “How long did you fool him?” I asked.
“Oh, not long,” Jimmy admitted. “I said he was a sumbitch. Never said he was stupid. So sometimes I would go out unofficial-like with the reg’lar militia—the sheriff’s posse. They had their own ATVs. Horses, too. Some places hooves’ll take you where tires won’t go. They were locals, and knew the country just as well as the bandits. I mean they knew it close up, like you know your girlfriend, not just from the up-and-down.”
“You were too far north for the twenty-fours?” asked Angel.
Jimmy shrugged. “Nah, but the twenty-fours can’t give you terrain detail the way a LEO sat’ can. Sometimes a little sliver between canyon walls was all the sky we could dish. There’s always something up there but you have to code dance, depending on what sat’ your dish can catch. Well, that sheriff was a clever pud. Didn’t need an eye in the sky, because he had eyes and ears all over ground level—and kept his county in pretty good law ‘n’ order, considering. But he knew when he needed extra weenie, so he was happy enough when I tagged along. Not happy, you understand; but happy enough. The irregulars don’t much like us; but they hate the bandits worse—‘cause it’s their brothers and cousins and all getting kneecapped and necklaced.”