Grunt Life (23 page)

Romeo One was gone.

Of Romeo One, there were three scouts left. Two were in critical condition and the third wasn’t talking to anyone. He was catatonic, and from the reports he wasn’t coming out of it anytime soon.

“And now for the good news,” Olivares said.

“That this is all an intergalactic joke and they’re going to bring back television, Guinness, and the game of football?” MacKenzie frowned as he said the words, not even trying to be funny.

“The good news is that eleven of the devices deployed, fired into the earth, and sent their images back to the servers. According to the techs, we have a seventy-per-cent solution and are able to read the underground chambers.”

If we’d cared, we all might have stood and applauded. But we didn’t. So we sat there.

But Aquinas spoke up. “Wait a moment. You said eleven of the devices deployed, giving us a seventy percent solution? We carried more than forty-eight devices to the mound. Are you saying they only needed eighteen?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Olivares said.

“No, it isn’t,” said Ohirra, giving me a challenging look. “I’m Asian. It’s math. Built in redundancy. Either us or them. We were sent in case the others couldn’t make it.”

Olivares stood. “Let’s not go second-guessing command. We’re grunts. All of us. We’re here for one thing: to save the planet. No one said it was going to be pretty. No one said we weren’t going to be tools for command to use as they saw fit.” He grimaced and shook his head. “Get used to it.”

He glared at the rest of us, then his face softened. “We have another mission.”

“What is it this time, karaoke on the Mound?” MacKenzie asked. “We going to line dance to the tune of
It’s Raining Men
?”

“The techs designed a new bomb.”

We shut up at this. We weren’t going out to take radar or sonar images. We were going out to blow shit up.

“It’s a thermobaric bomb, and we need to have it in place before sunrise tomorrow.”

“Now we’re talking,” Ohirra said, rubbing her hands together. A smile cracked her face, for the first time in a long time.

Thompson stood. “I want to carry it. I want to carry the bomb and put it in place.”

I looked at Olivares and he nodded.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said. “Mission brief in six hours. Until then, get some shuteye.” He pointed to Ohirra. “And you, no snoring.”

She flipped him off and we all chuckled. She was the only one of us who
didn’t
snore, poor girl. We were so tired, she’d be lucky to get to sleep before the rest of us started sawing logs.

We’re hearing of a group called Ombra. They’re rumored to be fighting the Cray. Go Ombra. Kick their asses. Kick them all the way back to wherever they came from. For all of you out there who still believe in God, give a kneel and a prayer for these men and women. They may just be our only hope.

Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,

Night Stalker Monologue #1008

CHAPTER THIRTY

I
WOKE TO
the screams of Romeo One, begging me to come save them. Blood and entrails rained from the sky. I shot upright, bleary-eyed, expecting to be covered in their remains, and swiped madly at my face before realizing it had been all a dream. I sat, gasping, trying to calm myself.

I’d only been asleep for a few hours and I desperately needed more. But try as I might, I couldn’t find the sweet spot. Every time I closed my eyes, Romeo One’s screams kept me from finding sleep. Finally, I surged out of bed and stalked to the bathroom in my shorts. I stared sleepy-eyed into the mirror for a moment, then dashed my face under the ice-cold running water.

“You dreaming of them too?”

I turned to see Aquinas sitting on the end of a bench, back to the wall, knees drawn up in front of her.

“Romeo One?”

She nodded. “They were
gone
. Just like that. I hear them screaming for me, but there’s nothing I can do to help them.”

“We can’t save everyone.” I wiped my face. “I just wish they’d go away so I could sleep.”

“Do you really hear them too?” she asked.

“Yeah. I guess it’s because we’re more empathetic than regular people. You know how us PTSDs are.” I laughed, but it was empty.

She didn’t return my laugh. The sound fell to the cavern floor and lay there, about as unfunny as anything I could have said. I was in the middle of mentally hammering myself for my insensitivity when she began to speak.

“They left me in the turret of the vehicle. I had overwatch. I was supposed to keep them safe.”

I held my breath. She’d never been willing to open up before.

“But there was a group of children on the side of the road. They’d been playing soccer when we arrived and were just standing there, watching my squad pass. They were no threat, so I scanned other sectors.”

I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming.

“Then one of the kids walked out of the crowd, a little boy. He wore a vest packed with explosives. I knew what was coming next, so I looked for him. I knew there had to be a man, with a detonator or a cell phone. It didn’t take long for me to find him. He stood behind the children. There was no way I could take him out without killing a few kids, but if I didn’t, my entire squad would die.”

“So I fired three bursts. The first missed entirely and ended up going through the wall of the home behind him and killing a woman. The second burst took him out, as well as a little girl standing next to him. I couldn’t stop myself from firing the third burst. It took out two boys. I can still see them twisting. I can still see the utter horror in their eyes. I mean, who would do such a thing?”

Opening my eyes, I found her staring at me.

I smiled weakly.

“Right? Nobody. Then I saw everyone staring at me, wondering what had happened. Everyone, that is, except the young man on the bicycle who had stopped beside our vehicle. He glanced up at me and grinned. I can still see his stained teeth in my dreams. Then he pressed a button on the phone he’d been holding. I turned quickly back to my squad just in time to see the boy explode, killing all of my squad and seven more children. They’d packed ballbearings into the jacket. No one stood a chance.”

I uncrossed my arms and walked to her. I sat on the bench a mere foot from her. “No one would have. It was a no-win situation.”

“Next thing you’ll say is that I tried my best. Listen, I’ve heard it all. I’ve had some of the best minds in rehabilitation fail to unscrew my brain.”

I felt a smile slip into place.

She caught it right away. “You find this funny, Mason?”

“No. I just figured it out.”

“Did you now? Please, tell me.”

I shrugged. “You want to be guilty. You want to be responsible. I get that. Us PTSDs understand this. Those experts, no matter how many letters they have after their names, will never be able to understand the redefinition of responsibility we live by. After all, it really wasn’t our fault. We were in a bad situation at a bad time. It was the
Kobiashi Maru
without Captain Kirk cheating his way to victory. But our definition of responsibility and our idea of guilt won’t let us get off that easily. Do you know why?”

“Why?” she asked softly.

“Because there has to be someone to blame.”

Her knuckles whitened.

“There has to be someone to blame,” I repeated. “So why not blame ourselves?”

“I’m the one who pulled the trigger.”

“And you shot the wrong person.”

“And I shot the wrong person. I killed people who wouldn’t have been killed otherwise. They died because of me. Not because of the bomber.”

“But perfection is the problem, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean? Do you think I’m trying to say I’m perfect?”

“Not you. Society. The army that recruited and trained you. The Bible. God. Your parents. Our friends. The universe. They all believe in perfection. And for some strange reason, they pull decent young men and women off the streets, train them for a few weeks, give them weapons, and tell them not to make a single mistake... ever. But we
can’t
be perfect. We’re bound to make mistakes. They knew that when they put us in these positions. They accepted it as risk.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I? Then tell me, what is the SOP for the situation you found yourself in? Did you follow it?”

She nodded.

“So you did what they trained you to do and came back with a different result than expected.”

She nodded again.

“Then how is it your fault?” I held up a finger. “Oh, wait. I know this one. I’ve used it myself. You should have known, like we’re some new breed of psychic soldier. If I was, I never would have joined the Army. I would be living on a boat in the middle of some lake, getting fast food delivered by parachute three times a day.”

Her knuckles relaxed.

I shut up for awhile. I’d said enough. Instead I looked at her, taking in her delicate features and the slight uptilt of her nose. I got lost in the freckles beneath her left eye and didn’t notice when she began staring back at me.

“You don’t have to spend your time trying to make me feel better,” she said. “I’ve had the best try and fail.”

I spread my hands. “What I do with my spare time is my decision.”

She smiled, “You don’t have to protect me, you know.”

“I think I do.” I understood that she was her own woman, and that she was a grunt just like me, but my feelings dictated that I protect her. She was something special to me, something valuable, and no matter how impervious and tough she might appear, I had to ensure her survival because my life was better with her in it than without.

“But you don’t own me.”

“Don’t I?” I said. “Don’t I own you? Don’t you own me? Don’t all of us own a part of each other?” I reached out and took her hand. “This is your hand attached to your body, but it is a human hand, a hand of my species. We are kin, you and I. Outside are aliens who would have us all die and inside, here we are, one species, one tribe, one family, all of us different versions of the same person.” She sighed. “I’m just a dumb grunt at the end of the world, trying to make some aliens pay up for killing off my people.”

“Is this your pitch?”

“Is it working?”

“Not yet.”

I took that as encouragement. “I feel the connection between us. I can’t not look at you when you walk into room. I can’t not think about you when you’re in pain. I just want something special before I die.”

She looked up, and for a moment I was sure she was going to grin. Instead, her shoulders slumped and she rolled her eyes. “You might have had me if it wasn’t for that last line.”

Damn.
“I forced it, didn’t I?” I shook my head. “I’m not used to being honest with someone like you. Hell, I’m not used to being honest with myself.”

“So are you going to kiss me now?” she asked.

I nodded, and I did. For ten long seconds we weren’t in a cavern beneath the Serengeti waiting to be picked off by aliens. We were a boy and a girl, alone, together.

Then we separated.

I went in for another but she pushed her palm into my chest.

“I think that’s enough, big boy.”

She stepped around me and walked out of the room.

I stood there for a moment or two, savoring the sensation of her lips on mine.

“There you are,” Olivares said as he entered the room. “Guess you wanted to get an early start.” He washed his face before turning back to me. “And you know? I had the strangest dream.”

“Let me guess. You dreamed about Romeo One.”

“How do you know?”

“That makes three of us dreamed the same thing.”

“That’s not right.”

“Agreed. Not right at all.”

Does the patriotism demonstrated by the main character in Robert Heinlein’s novel
Glory Road
fall flat against the character’s demonstrated hatred for his own government’s social welfare system? Discuss.

TF OMBRA Study Question

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

W
E DRESSED WITHOUT
a word, trying to forget our dreams as best we could. Each of us made our way to the mess chamber for a little breakfast before the operation. Nothing that would make us slow, but enough to keep our metabolism flowing. I sipped an energy drink and lazily ate a bowl of tasteless oatmeal.

Thirty tables were arrayed in lines with a mess table along the far wall. A bored mess sergeant and two KP-duty privates mixed and served powdered eggs, dehydrated meat and potatoes. Everyone else helped themselves to the other odds and ends on offer. There was normally a healthy buzz in the mess hall as people chatted about their day, planning this and that, remembering the times before, arguing over the superiority of sports teams that no longer existed. But today everyone seemed subdued. They barely even noticed as I entered. While most of me was happy that they were distracted by something else, a small part of me wondered what it had taken to make them forget so quickly.

When MacKenzie finally joined us, he all but slammed his tray down on the table. “You’re not going to believe this.” He grinned from ear to ear.

We chewed on our food and looked at him quizzically.

As it turned out, everyone had dreamed about Romeo One. Not just us, but
everyone
. I don’t know why MacKenzie found it so funny, but he thought it was a riot. I was both too tired and too intrigued about what had happened with Michelle to dwell much on our shared dream.

Olivares looked like he was about to say something, when Ohirra stood and pointed out it was time for us to get moving.

Thirty minutes later we were in our suits.

Forty-five minutes later we were checked out.

Sixty minutes later we were poised at the end of Trench One.

The bomb looked like a fuel pod for a jet fighter that had been wired by a platoon of kindergarteners. A Faraday cage had been placed around it. The whole thing was too large to carry, so we had been provided with a sled.

0500. We had thirty minutes to put the bomb in place before the sky began to lighten. Not much time, but the engineers had had to build the sled and finish making the bomb operational, so it was what it was. And that was okay. We’d been bloodied, so to speak. We’d attacked, the Cray had defended, and we’d killed each other. I no longer felt the same butterflies I’d had on our last assault. I’d gone into the alien food processor and come out the other end, only slightly worse for wear. Where before I’d had to swallow pure fear, now I just wanted to get moving. It was the waiting that caused the most agitation. So when we got the go-ahead, I was relieved to finally be in the mission.