"I could use some help," Shari said, walking over.
"Well, that clarifies that," Wendy said with a laugh.
"Clarifies what?"
"The sergeant major needs to spend some time around Captain Elgars," Mueller noted. "I recommended going to the surface, along with Wendy so that the captain wouldn't be completely alone. Wendy pointed out that you needed too much help with the kids for her to leave. So it came down to inviting all of you to the surface."
"Where, on the surface?" Shari asked nervously.
"There's at least one decent place in Franklin, I think," Mosovich noted. "It's an R&R area for the corps. There's got to be someplace."
"I dunno," said Shari, reluctantly. "Franklin? It . . ."
"It doesn't have a very good reputation down here," Wendy noted with a grim chuckle.
"We don't go there much either," Mueller said. "But, trust me, the food's better than down here."
"I'm not sure . . ." Shari said.
"Well, I am," Wendy argued. "How long have we been down here? Five years? How long since you've seen the sun?"
"Long time," Shari whispered with a nod. "Except for Billy, I don't think any of the kids remember what it looks like."
"There will be three trained soldiers with us," Wendy noted. "It will be safe. It will be a chance for the kids to look at the surface. How bad can it be?"
"There's basically no Posleen activity at the moment," Mosovich pointed out. "There's a globe around Clarkesville acting funny, but they haven't done anything either. Except chase us around the hills."
"Okay," Shari said after a moment's thought. "Let's do it. Like you said, Wendy, how bad can it be?"
* * *
"You've completely outgrown this, Billy," Shari said, adjusting Billy's windbreaker as Wendy negotiated for her personal weapon.
"This is . . . unbelievable," she said looking at the weapon. It was an Advanced Infantry Weapon, the standard issue weapon for the Ground Forces, a 7.62 semi-automatic rifle with a 20mm grenade launcher on the underside. This one had been personalized with a laser sight on the top.
Had.
"Where's my laser sight?" she asked angrily, turning the rusted weapon over and over. "I turned this in with a Leupold four power scope that was laser mounted. There does not appear to be a Leupold scope on this weapon. There also were three more magazines. And you made me turn in my two hundred rounds of ammo that weren't in the mags. So where is all that?"
"The inventory just lists the weapon," the guard said, looking at his screen. "No ammo, no scope, no magazines."
"Well, bugger that," Wendy said, leaning forward to shove a faded receipt against the greenish glass. "You want to read this motherfucking receipt, asshole? What the fuck am I supposed to do with a weapon and no goddamned rounds?"
"Wendy," Mosovich said, pulling at her arm. "Give it up. There's no scope. There's no rounds. These assholes shot them off long ago. And the scope is probably on this dickhead's personal weapon. That he hasn't shot in a year."
"You want to get out of here at all you better jack up that attitude, Lurp-Boy," the guard snarled from behind the glass.
Mueller leaned forward until his nose was within inches of the armored glass and smiled. "HEY!" he shouted, then laughed as the guard jumped. He reached into the billow pockets of his blouse and pulled out a charge of C-4. Pulling off an adhesive cover he applied it to the glass then began patting his pockets, muttering "Detonators, detonators . . ."
Mosovich smiled. "You wanna open the doors or you want I should come in and press the button?"
He smiled and nodded as the armored doors behind him slid back. "Thanks so very much. And if you're thinking about dicking around with the elevators, let me just point out that that means we'll have to come back."
"And . . . have a nice day," Mueller said, taking Kelly's hand and heading for the door.
"I can't believe this," Wendy snarled as she turned the rifle over and over in her hands. "I dropped this thing off immaculate. Like the day it came from the factory."
"I doubt it would even work now," Mueller said with a sigh. "Those things are a bastard when they rust. It's the firing mechanism; it's fragile as hell."
"Don't worry about it," Mosovich said. "It's not like we're going to get jumped by the Posleen in Franklin."
"We heard they were all over the place," Shari asked nervously, as they reached the elevators to the surface. "That people are killed every day."
"Oh, they are," Mueller said walking over to hit the elevator button. The elevator was huge, easily large enough to carry a semi-trailer, separated into lines by a chain and post arrangement. Several of the chains dangled free and one of the posts rolled on the ground as it lurched sideways. "There must be three or four civilians killed every day by ferals. You know how many people were killed every day in car wrecks before the war?"
"Yeah," Mosovich agreed. "Death rates, excepting combat casualties, have dropped in the States."
"Why are we going sideways?" Elgars interjected.
"Oh, sorry, I forgot you've never been in one," Mosovich said. "There are multiple elevators for each shaft, so that incoming refugees could be shuttled down really fast. There's an 'up' shaft and a 'down' shaft and they slide between the two." He nodded as the structure shuddered and began to rise. "I've been on one that got stuck; wasn't pleasant. Anyway, where were we?"
"Reduced death rate," Shari said.
"Not reduced overall, mind you," Mueller said. "Combat casualty rates have made up for it."
"How many?" Elgars asked. "I mean, combat casualties?"
"Sixty-two million," Mosovich said. "In the U.S. and of American military forces. And that's just the military losses. Pales compared to China and India, mind you, but still pretty bad."
"Six . . ." Shari gasped. "Could you say that again?"
"Sixty-two million," Mueller said quietly. "At the height of the war there were nearly that many under arms in the Contiguous U.S., what they call CONUS, and in the Expeditionary Forces. But in the last five years, most combat units, most infantry battalions, have had three casualties for every position in them. That is, they have had three hundred percent casualties. At its height, the American portion of the EFs had nearly forty million personnel. But the total casualties have topped that and the AEF is below twelve million, and only half of that is actual 'shooting at the Posleen' fighters."
"And there's a steady attrition in the interior," Mosovich added. "There's still landings from time to time; there was a globe that made it down, mostly intact, near Salt Lake just last year."
"We heard about that," Wendy said. "But . . . nothing like those casualty figures."
"They're not very open with them," Mosovich agreed. "Add in the forty million or so civilian casualties and the fact that we're fighting this war in the middle of a 'drop' in males of prime military age and we're . . . well, we're getting bled white. Even with rejuving older guys, taking a person that has never held a weapon in their hands and teaching when they are eighteen is one thing, doing it when they're fifty is . . . different. They, generally, aren't stupid enough to be good soldiers. Not cannon fodder soldiers. Young guys want to be heroes so the women will love them and have their babies. Old guys just want to live to see the next sunrise."
"Which just makes keeping women out of combat units stupid," Wendy said, shaking her head at the condition of her rifle. "This is . . ." She shook her head again. "I know that I can depend on you big strong men to protect me. But I don't want to have to!"