Infinity Squad (3 page)

"It's okay guys," Juan said. He waved the lit joint in the air, in a sweep covering all of us at the table. "If she doesn't like what the Squad does to celebrate the Second Lieu's homecoming, she's not good enough for us!"

"That's the spirit," I chuckled. "She and Trent should write a book. Speaking of which..." I turned to my left. "Zazlu, we're on a highly guarded military base. In an active combat zone. On another planet, 50 million fucking miles from home. And you still get better weed than I did in the middle of Detroit!"

The Iranian smiled, his bald head wrinkling. "Supply and demand, my friend, supply and demand."

"Supply of what? Demand from where?"

Zazlu held his smoke sagely in his mouth for a few seconds, making us wait, then puffed it out and said, "What do we have more of on this planet than we could ever use or want in our lifetime?"

Ann-Marie snorted. "Hell-Spiders."

"Prudes," Juan spat.

"Assholes with officer's bars?" I asked.

"Weapons!" Zazlu cried. "Revolvers, rifles, grenades, bullets! And every month they ship us more! We must constantly build new warehouses to store it all!" He held up the weed in front of him and squinted at it.

"And in the parts of Earth where such things are grown, what do the hard-working people living there want the most?"

"Cable TV?" Juan offered.

"Clean hospitals?" I shrugged.

"Rape-free afternoons?" Ann-Marie asked.

"Weapons!" Zazlu said. "We have weapons, they want weapons! We want certain chemicals, they have these chemicals! Supply meets demand! Everyone is happy!"

I rubbed my forehead. Either the weed was getting to me, or I was really dense. "But how are you getting the weapons out of the armory, off the planet, onto a starship and through the wormgate without anyone knowing about it?"

"That is the genius! I do not have to! The switch is made back on Earth!"

"Wait," Ann-Marie Butcher said, sitting up, "Do you mean that out of all those crates that say 'Rifles, Class-A' sitting in the armory-"

"Two out of a hundred have something very special for Zazlu," he beamed, propping his feet on the table.

"Genius indeed," I chuckled.

"Until another Hell-Spider sneaks on base," Ann-Marie said. "And we break open one of the crates in the armory and try to fight him off with one hundred pounds of weed." Zazlu tried to pass the joint to her but Butcher waved it off, annoyed. "Alright, Lieutenant, we've buttered you up enough," she said. "It's time you told us what it was like."

"What
what
was like?"

"Dying. Coming back. The new body. What's it feel like?"

"Ah, you don't want to hear-" Then I looked around, and noticed even Juan sitting more attentively. Zazlu too. I sighed. "Okay. Well, first of all, the only things that saved me were this- " I tapped the buffering band around my forehead, "and this." I patted the Colt .45 in my holster.

"So like the First Lieu says, never leave the barracks without them. I mean it- all of you, all the time." I gave them my best Serious Lieutenant Look. The most important thing I had learned in Officer Candidate School, and that was from the janitor.

"In fact, with spiders breaking into the base now, it might be a good idea to wear them to sleep, too. I'll suggest it to Ridley when he gets back from patrol. Which would be when, Zaz?"

Zazlu thought for a moment. "Should be already past. Immortal Squad guys started getting back a few hours ago, I saw."

I nodded. "Anyway, wear 'em. All the time."

"Lieutenant?" Juan prodded. "The dying?"

I sighed. “Fine. First of all, it sucks. Pain like you've never felt before. And you're there. The bands don't take you away until AFTER it happens. You're awake the whole time you're dying, you know you've died, and it feels... wrong. Like it shouldn't be. And then you wake up again, and..."

I looked at my young, strange hands and flexed them. "You feel loss. You know you can't go back. Ever. So, no matter what the Immortal Squad guys tell you, no matter what the General says- you guys try to stay alive and in your real bodies, no matter what. It's not worth it."

The group sat in silence for a few moments, contemplating my words somberly.

Then Juan said "Should we say no to drugs too, Dad?"

"Juan, I swear to god..." I began, but then I was laughing too.

He was young, he didn't know. And I
was
alive when by all rights I shouldn't be, so how bad was it really?

From the bunk nearest the door, Private Rex Grimstone leaned out past his makeshift privacy curtain. One data feed was projecting right to one lens of his coke-bottle glasses, another on the conformal screen he wore wrapped around his wrist, another to the stiff datapad he held in his hand. "Someone's coming! Immortal Squad!"

Smiles turned to straight lips.

"Which one?" I asked.

"Lesko Crulan," Grimmy replied.

I relaxed. "Ah, let him in. He's one of the good ones."

Zazlu frowned. "Are there such things?"

I patted his huge shoulder. "We can't live in isolation, Zaz. We may actually need the other squads some day, to watch our back. You know, if we ever actually got into a real battle."

Zazlu frowned more and waited, his thick weightlifting arms crossed over his chest. I looked around the room. "Okay, let's put the coke away, definitely, and I guess the weed too. But bring out some beers- some
regulation
beers- and at least make it look like we've been drinking them."

Ann-Marie, Juan and coke private and drunk private moved to follow my commands, as did Steve. And when Rex unlocked the barracks door thirty seconds later, I walked in. Well, my cloned body did. Well, my cloned body if I had done nothing but lift weights for the past month. The shoulders were bull-like, the thighs massive, and his head was shaved like Zazlu's. And despite being in a cloned duplicate of the body I was in, Lesko still
walked
like a Russian.

"I heard that one of Infinity Squad had a little run in with a spider and finally popped their cherry!" he laughed, walking over to me, then slapped me solidly on the back. "Welcome to the Brotherhood!"

"Thanks," I coughed, trying to get my head to stop spinning from his slap.

"The Brotherhood of Death." Lesko reached out with one blackened fingertip and pressed it to my neck. It burned. It burned like a bitch.

"GODDAMN IT!" I screamed, grabbing my neck. "What did you do?" I looked at my hand. Now it had a black spot burning into it, in the same ink Doctor Murphy used to put on my barcodes. Lesko was laughing even as Zazlu moved behind him, preparing to separate his head from his shoulders.

"Zaz, it's okay! It's just ink- it will stop burning in a second," I said, clutching my neck. "I hope."

Lesko grinned, a big toothy grin that was definitely Russian, even if his body was not. "But the mark on your mind," he said, "that will stay. And you will always remember the number of times you have cheated death itself." He pulled down his shirt collar to show three black marks burned in a line running around his neck.

Then Lesko dug into his fatigues and pulled out a flask. "And after death comes celebration! A treat. I have squeezed the still for three shots of my finest grain whiskey! The strongest diversion you will taste on this miserably sober planet."

We all started laughing. Even Ann-Marie.

"What?" Lesko demanded. "What is funny?"

Ten minutes later he was taking his third hit of Zazlu's weed and his fourth shot of Jack Daniels. A line of cocaine stretched in front of his seat at the table, waiting. His eyes were wide, like a baby's at the bottle.

"This is.. unbelievable! This is better than... how do you do this? Past the customs agents?"

Zazlu grinned. "Squad secrets, my friend." He pulled the joint from the Russian's fingers, took a drag, then passed it around the table to Ann-Marie. She pulled as well and took another swallow of her beer. Even I wasn't sure she could touch her finger to her nose now.

Ann-Marie sighed with pleasure and propped her bare feet right on the middle of the table, letting her lean, tan, runner's legs stretch out in front of all of our eyes. Only Lesko looked for more than a moment.

I pushed my elbow into his arm gently. "Hey, so, about these marks? All Immortal Squad wears them?"

"Yes," he nodded, still sneaking peeks at Ann-Marie's legs. "The marks are how we track bravery and honor of the warriors in our squad. They will never fade, never wear off, until you die." He grinned. "And then we add another one."

"Well, one's all I need."

His looks had turned less sneaky. Normal Ann-Marie would never have allowed it, but she was currently giggling at the tiles on the ceiling.

"In my squad," Lesko said, rubbing his chin, "the warriors with more marks are awarded more honor. Greater... benefits from other members."

I knocked my elbow into him harder. "We tend to be more egalitarian here, Lesko."

"All for one, one for all?" Zazlu added. "A team of
brothers
? All of us?"

"But there is always competition between warriors, no?" Lesko said. He looked at Butcher again. "For
desirable
objects?"

Zazlu coughed. A warning. "Not in our squad."

"You know," I said, "the First Lieutenant had one rule when he put Infinity Squad together." I sat up and clasped Lesko's shoulder even harder than he had slapped mine. That finally got him looking at me instead of Ann-Marie. "No assholes."

"No assholes," Zaz repeated.

"Meaning no posers, no schemers, no bullies," I continued. "Anyone with assholic tendencies, we shipped them out. Why do you think we sent you Cornish?"

"But Cornish is an honored warrior!" Lesko cried. "He has the second most kills amongst us! Fearless, a master of all weapons, and five marks already!"

"And one grade-A asshole," Zazlu said.

"A weasel," Juan added.

Ann-Marie giggled. "A bully."

"The First Lieu saw it right away- traded Cornish out first chance he got. Luckily, we couldn't be happier with Grimmy here."

Lesko huffed. "With a name like Rex Grimstone, we expected-"

"A stone cold killer?" I laughed. "Not a one-thirty pound kid with glasses who could hook a printer to a coffee machine?" I shook my head. "You guys lost the best tech on the planet. But we're happy to give him a home. That's how Ridley keeps the squad copacetic: everyone does the job they're best suited for. Whether it directly kills spiders or not."

"What else is there but to kill-"

Grimmy leaned out of his curtain again and screamed. "GUN OIL GUN OIL GUN OIL!"

All of us at the table exploded into action. Zazlu gathered up the cocaine and weed and threw it under the false tile below his bunk. Juan loped to the exhaust fan in the window and started venting the hemp-scented smoke out at full blast. Steve gathered the beer bottles and Ann-Marie started spraying gun lubricating oil on every surface, then on her own hand gun which she already had in four pieces on the table.

Only Lesko stood frozen, a speed bump in the flurry of motion around him. Even the privates waking up and leaping from their bunks knew what to do better than Lesko. As they settled around the tables and started disassembling their firearms, I turned the sound system to soft classical jazz and pulled the cylinder out of my Colt just as the door opened and the General's advance guard came in. Black shirts, black pants, black boots, automatic shotguns on their shoulders and more medals than MacArthur on their chests. The BlackShirts also made that ridiculous double foot stamp whenever they changed direction or stopped. I've always hated MPs, no matter what the uniform.

Two BlackShirts entered, flanked the door, then snapped to parade attention.

"A-TEH-SHUN!" one screamed. "General Oakley on deck!"

We looked up confusedly from the hand guns we were cleaning, then shuffled to our feet and saluted as the General strode in. Puffy and somewhat out of shape, but the two stars on his collar made him second only to God on this planet. He strode in with a bulldog look on his face and fired his steely gaze on us.

"Good morning. Infinity Squad, I have some good news and some sad news to relate to- WHAT IS THAT SMELL?" he cried, stopping and pinching his nose just two steps in.

"Gun oil, sir!" Ann-Marie, Zazlu and Juan barked in unison.

"Weekly cleaning of our service weapons, as per regulations, General," I said. "The gun oil may be a little pungent."

"It's overpowering! Put them away, now! Put it all away!"

I nodded at Ann-Marie and she did, collecting the weapon parts, and using a rag to wipe up most, but not all, of the gun oil puddles on the table. I loved gun oil. You could hardly smell the weed in the air now.

General Oakley started walking up and down our line, inspecting god knows what since it was 5 in the morning and we were dressed in our nightwear.