A Private Little War(17)
They’d dropped, initially, not far from those cities on the coast—the sprawling mud and stone trading centers and maritime capitals everyone knew were the keys to final victory on Iaxo even if no one really knew what they were called. Two years ago, seven hundred days ago—one more than that now, maybe—they’d come down, bearing in like a dart on that first day, and they’d been able to see nothing. Strapped down inside the troop compartment of their dropship, sitting so close they’d almost been on one another’s laps, breathing the warm, recycled air and shaking like a hundred individual earthquakes. Their view of Iaxo had been better from orbit, and from orbit it hadn’t been very good. But anything was better than trying to stare through steel.
Morale had been an issue. These men, they’d never worked together before. Most of them had never met before finding themselves crammed into the dropship with all their personal gear, survival gear, jump-out kits, whatever. Some 52.2 kilograms per man, about 115 pounds. No one had known whether or not they’d have to fight their way off the dropship—leaping, guns blazing, onto alien soil: the classic hot landing. When Ted had asked, corporate had said no. Corporate had assured Ted: “Quiet as a civilian drop. You’re not going to be fighting your way off anything.”
But then on the day—the first day, while the men had been sitting through briefings in cold storerooms on how to use the gear bestowed upon them by the company, how to fly planes that no one had flown in centuries—Ted had found fourteen rifles to distribute among the members of the Carpenter 7 mission. Fourteen Hiland-model assault rifles, older than he was, plus clips, cleaning kits, and fourteen thousand rounds of ammunition waiting, crated, unmarked, and sitting on the deck plates of the transport Junholdt beside the dropship’s ramp. This, Ted had thought, was very strange. Either it was expected to be a hot LZ or it wasn’t. If it was, then why would the company allocate only fourteen rifles instead of one for every man? And if it wasn’t, why offer any at all?
Ted had decided that corporate was either lying or stupid or ignorant or maybe all three. He’d shaken his head at the ridiculousness of it all. These had been days when delusion and corporate absurdity had still been funny, not fatal. Ted had a sense of humor then. Or thought he had.
When everyone had lined up to load, he’d assigned the unexpected equipment poverty-style: a loaded rifle to one man, extra ammo to the one going out the door behind him. If the man with the gun should die, the one behind him would pick it up and carry the fight forward. He’d told everyone it was just for safety’s sake, hooked his thumbs in his belt, puffed out his chest, and said, “Just in case, yeah? Company’s just looking out for our tender asses. But this is going to be quiet as a civilian drop. You’re not going to be fighting your way off anything.”
And then they’d all buckled in and fallen from the sky like a meteor, from the belly of the Junholdt to the soft earth below. Eight minutes of free fall, then atmosphere interface, then forty-four minutes of translation between sky and ground. Ted had kept his eyes open, watching. He’d watched the drop master, who spent the entire fall, up until the last three minutes, reading a tattered paper book with no cover, one arm looped through a standing strap, just like he was riding the train. He watched the men. Eddie Lucas, he remembered, had thrown up an amazing number of times. A few of the men talked, or tried to. Most of the pilots slept.
Arriving on a new planet, any new planet, is like being born again. Everything is new. Nothing has a name. For lack of anything better or more productive to do, you ascribe malice or creeping evil to the stupidest of things: that rock, this plant. It’s the same everywhere. Everyone does it. After his first half-dozen landings for Flyboy, Ted was never able to look at a baby the same way again, knowing for a stone fact that from the moment they come into the world, they are full of hate and formless terror.
Carpenter, though, was different. Iaxo was different.
Aboard ship, the lights in the troop compartment had gone red for the final sixty seconds of cushioned descent. Ted had rallied everyone up to their feet, organized them. The drop master was standing by the ramp, shouting: “Everyone up! Everyone off! Quick-quick! There ain’t no round-trip tickets here!” And Ted had wondered what movie he was living in that’d put those words in his mouth.
The drop master had counted down the final thirty seconds on his hands, holding up three fingers, then two, then counting down from ten—his mouth forming words but no sound coming out. Nerves, Ted remembered. His nerves had been terrible. A weight pressing on his chest so heavy that his legs had gone numb and he’d felt sweat prickling the backs of his ears.