That bothered June Ranson a lot.
But not nearly as much as the fact that the orders she'd just received put her neck on the block, sure as Death itself.
Chapter Five
Speedin' Steve Riddle sat by Platt's cot in the medical tent, listening to machines pump air in and out of his buddy's lungs.
And thinking.
They sat on the lowered tailgate of Platt's truck, staring at the sky and giggling occasionally at the display. At first there'd been only the lesser moon edging one horizon while the other horizon was saffron with the sunset.
Lights, flames? . . . streaks of tracers that painted letters in the sky for the drug-heightened awareness of the two men. Neither Platt nor Riddle could read the words, but they knew whatever was being spelled was excruciatingly funny.? . . .
"Speed," called Lieutenant Cooter, "get your ass back to the blower and start running the prelim checklist. We're moving out tonight."
"Wha . . .?" Riddle blurted, jerking his head up like an ostrich surprised at a waterhole. He was rapidly going bald. To make up for it, he'd grown a luxuriant moustache that fluffed when he spoke or exhaled.
"Don't give me any lip, you stupid bastard!" Cooter snapped, though Speed's response had been logy rather than argumentative. "If I didn't need you bad, you'd be findin' your own ticket back to whatever cesspit you call home."
"Hey, El-Tee!" Otski called, sitting up on his cot despite the gentle efforts of Shorty Rogers to keep him flat. "How they hangin', Cooter-baby?"
He waggled his stump.
"Come on, Otski," Rogers said. Shorty was Flamethrower's driver and probably the best medic in the guard detachment as well as being a crewmate of the wounded man. "Just take it easy or I'll have to raise your dosage, and then it won't feel so good. All right?"
The medicomp metered Platt's breathing, in and out.
"Hey, lookit," Otski burbled, fluttering his stump again though he permitted Shorty to lower him back to the cot.
An air injector spat briefly, but the gunner's voice continued for a moment. "Lookit it when I wave, Cooter. I'm gonna get a flag. Whole bunch of flags, stick 'em in there 'n wave 'n wave . . . ."
"Shorty, you're gonna have to get back to the car too," Cooter said. "We'll turn 'em over to the Logistics staff until they can be lifted out to a permanent facility."
"Cop! None a' the Logistics people here'd know—"
Riddle thought:
The parts shed bulged around a puff of orange flame. The shockwave threw Riddle and Platt flat on the sloping tailgate; they struggled to sit up again. It was hilarious.
The Consie sapper rose from his crouch, silhouetted by the flaming shed he'd just bombed. He carried a machine pistol in a harness of looped rope, so that the weapon swung at waist height. His right hand snatched at the grip.
"Lookie, Speed!" Platt cackled. "He's just as bald as you are! Lookie!"
"Lookie!" Riddle called. He threw up his arms and fell backward with the effort.
The machine pistol crackled like the main truss of a house giving way. Its tracers were bright orange, lovely orange, as they drew spirals from the muzzle. One of them ricocheted around the interior of the truck box, dazzling Riddle with its howling beauty. He sat up again.
"Beauty!" he cried. Platt was thrashing on his back. Air bubbled through the holes in his chest.
The machine pistol pointed at Riddle. Nothing happened. The sapper cursed and slapped a magazine into the butt-well to replace the one that had ejected automatically when the previous burst emptied it.
The Consie's body flung itself sideways, wrapped in cyan light as a powergun from one of the combat cars raked him. The fresh magazine exploded. A few tracers zipped crazily out of the flashing yellow ball of detonating propellant.
"Beauty," Steve Riddle repeated as he fell backward.
Platt's chest wheezed.
"—a medicomp when it bit 'em on the ass!"
Air from the medicomp wheezed in and out of Platt's nostrils.
"Screw you!" called a supply tech with shrapnel wounds in his upper body.
"Then get 'em over to the Yokel side!" Cooter said. "They got facilities. Look, I'm not lookin' for an argument: we're movin' out at sunset, and none of my able-bodied crew are stayin' to bloody screw around here. All right?"
"Yeah, all right. One a' the newbies had some training back home, he says." Rogers stood up and gave a pat to the sleeping Otski. "Hey, how long we gonna be out?"
"Don't bloody ask," Cooter grunted bitterly. "Denzil, where's your driver?"
The left wing gunner from Sergeant Wylde's blower turned his head—all the motion of which he was capable the way he was wrapped. "Strathclyde?" he said. His voice sounded all right. The medicomp kept his coverings flushed and cool with a bath of nutrient fluid. "Check over to One-one. He's got a buddy there."
"Yeah,well,One-five needs a driver,"Cooter explained."I'm going to put him on it."
Shorty Rogers looked up. "What happened to Darples on One-five?" he asked.
"Head shot. One a' the gunners took over last night, but I figure it makes sense to transfer Strathclyde for a regular thing."
"Cop," muttered Rogers. "I'll miss that snake." Then, "Don't mean nuthin'."
"Riddle!" Cooter snarled. "What the bloody hell are you doing still here? Get your ass moving, or you won't bloody have one!"
Riddle walked out of the medical tent. The direct sunlight made him sneeze, but he didn't really notice it.
Bright orange tracers, spiraling toward his chest.
He reached his combat car, Deathdealer. The iridium armor showed fresh scars. There was a burnished half-disk on the starboard wall of the fighting compartment—copper spurted out by a buzzbomb. The jet had cooled from a near-plasma here on the armor. Must've been the round that took out Otski . . . .
Riddle sat on the shaded side of the big vehicle.No one else was around.Cooter and Rogers had their own business. They wouldn't get here for hours.
Otski wouldn't be back at all. Never at all.
Bright orange tracers . . . .
Riddle took a small cone-shaped phial out of his side pocket. It was dull gray and had none of the identifying stripes that marked ordinary stim-cones, the ones that gave you a mild buzz without the aftereffects of alcohol.
He put the flat side of the cone against his neck, feeling for the carotid pulse. When he squeezed the cone, there was a tiny hiss and a skin-surface prickling.
Riddle began to giggle again.
Troops were moving about the Slammers' portion of the encampment in a much swifter and more directed fashion than they had been the afternoon before, when Dick Suilin first visited this northern end of Camp Progress.
The reporter glanced toward the bell—a section of rocket casing—hung on topof the Tactical Operations Center. Perhaps it had rung, unheard by him while he drove past the skeletons of National Army barracks . . .?