So It Begins (24 page)

  “Not like we have much to scan except the Mars trash.” In response, Mendez frowned again. Grim snorted. “What? Now you’re worried about the Mars trash, too?”

   “Well, the brass is, Sarge. Seems like the other blocs are
not
dumping the trash anymore—at least not the way they were right after we posted Eureka as a no-fly zone.”

  “So who’s doing it now—and how?”

  “Well, that’s what’s got the brass upset. Word is that Earth HQ got on the horn with Admiral Riggen and tore him a new one. Threatened him with additional proctological procedures if he didn’t find where the trash was coming from and pronto.”

  “God almighty, Mendez: it’s space. How hard can it be to find where it’s coming from? You track back and—”

  But Mendez was shaking his head. “It’s not that kind of trash anymore, Sarge. No metals, nothing too big. Now it’s all composites, plastics: just a bunch of black bodies by the time it reaches us. And a lot of it is so small that—”

  Grim put up a bearish hand. “Okay, professor: that’s enough. I’m not on the review board for your OCS app.”

  Mendez’s eyes bulged, blinked, bulged again. “But Sarge, I wouldn’t—I’m not—”

  “Save it: except for your fear of cosmic rays, you’re too eager to die to be an enlisted man. Also, if the rumors are true, you have more brain cells than an amoeba, so obviously you’re on OCS’s radar.”

  As if on cue, the command circuit toned twice: coded traffic from Base. After going through the tiresome two-sided authentication waltz, the inevitable Junior Grade Lieutenant on the other end got down to business: “Shack Four, we are updating you on your replacement for Priestley: we’ve got a clearance snafu on our end. Probably won’t get it resolved before the end of your watch.”

  As Grim heard the first indignant words come out of his mouth, he realized that he was now shouting at an officer— as had happened too often throughout his career. It did not matter that the officer was a J.G. and therefore the human equivalent of pond scum: this pond scum still ranked him and could pull a seniority marking—a “rocker”—off the bottom of his stack of sergeant’s chevrons. Grim’s realization of this trailed a crucial second behind his shout of: “We’re a man down because of a ‘clearance snafu?’ What the hell kind of bullshit is that . . . sir?” Grim could hear the insincerity in the lagging honorific; knew the J.G. had heard the same. Oh well, Grim hadn’t really liked being a Master Sergeant anyway: too much paperwork.

  “Sergeant Grimsby,”—the voice was markedly colder than the outside temperature—“Priestley can only be replaced by someone who’s cleared for the same special duty.”

  “Special duty? What special duty?”

  Mendez tapped his junk-rifle, muttered: “Sarge, he means the Cochrane. Carrying a field prototype is special duty: along with Priestley, they only cleared five of us for—”

  Grim rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ. Sir, are you telling me you won’t send out a replacement because you don’t have anyone else who’s permitted to carry around another of these dumb-ass guns?”

  “Sergeant, I’m telling you I
can’t
send anyone who’s not a part of the field trial: the protocols are quite explicit—and are a top priority, as per Earth HQ.”

  “Great: so we’re down to two men for the rest of the watch.”

  Grim was surprised when the affirmation lagged, and then did not come. Instead, the J.G. said, “No; you’re down to one.”

  Grim looked at Mendez, who was already looking at him. Eyes narrowed, Grim asked the console coolly. “Say again, sir. Sounded to me like you said the duty watch in this shack is to be reduced to one.”

  “That is correct, Sergeant.”

  “That is a violation of our standing orders, sir. One man can’t oversee all the critical systems in the event of an attack. So—with all due respect—I am not going to leave Private Mendez out here on his own. He’s only been on station for—”

  “Sergeant: you’re not leaving Private Mendez. He’s leaving you.”

  Oh. Well. That made everything just lovely, then. “On whose order am I losing Mendez, sir?”

  “No one from here, Sergeant: this order actually originated off-base.”

  Mendez half-rose, eyes wide, fearful: Grim waved him down. A “mystery summons” from the rear was every soldier’s dread, since it usually signified bad news from home. But after thirty years in uniform, Grim had seen exceptions to every rule and this might be one of them: he decided to check. “Is he being called in to receive a personal communiqué from stateside?”

  “Doesn’t say, Sergeant. But the order to pull him off the line comes straight from Mars HQ. And he’s got to start back now. Otherwise he won’t make it inside before the hard weather hits.”

  Mendez raised his chin, seemed ready to resist; Grim shook his head at the newbie once, sharply. “Understood, base. Mendez is on his way. Rad Shack Four out.”

  The light that indicated a live carrier signal hadn’t winked out before Mendez launched into his protests. “But, sir—”

  “Mendez!”

  “But, Sarge, this order just isn’t right—”

  Grim was touched. “Listen, Esteban; I’ll be fine out here on my
ow—”

  “No, no: I mean that my recall order sounds fishy—and besides, it will invalidate the Cochrane’s field test.”

  It made Grim all warm inside to realize that Mendez’s commitment to an experimental weapon was immeasurably greater than whatever (apparently weak) concern he had for the continued well-being of his senior NCO. “Ah. The Cochrane.” That flimsy piece of shit. “Listen: if they were about to invalidate their precious test, they would have told you to leave it behind for me to babysit.”

  “I don’t buy it, Sarge—and no one seems to have clued in the J.G.: by ordering me in, he’ll invalidate the current trial phase. And my recall order doesn’t make any sense, either: whether it’s a family loss notice or not, it should go through the company CO before it gets to me. And leaving you out here on your own? That’s blatantly against standing orders.” Mendez frowned. “There’s too much going wrong or weird at the same time: I’m gonna look into this as soon as I return to base.”

  “Which starts now,” added Grim, snagging and handing the Cochrane up toward him.

  Mendez, distracted, took a moment to realize what Grim was doing: then he shook his head. “No, Sarge: you keep it.”

 
I’d rather have a piranha in my pants.
But Grim said: “Mendez, as you pointed out, I’m not cleared to—”

  Ever-respectful Mendez interrupted, almost violently. “Sarge: keep the Cochrane. If—well, if anything
happens
out here, you might need it.”

 
Like I need a hole in my vacc suit.
“I’m better off with my old—”

  But Mendez had snatched up the weapon Grim was about to mention—an Armalite 6mm caseless. “No, Sarge: I’m taking this one. You keep the Cochrane.”

  “Mendez, you stop this nonsense. I’ve been using that Armalite since—”

  But Mendez smiled an apology as he snugged his helmet, faceplate still up, over his head. “Sarge, the Cochrane is state of the art: liquid propellant, variable munitions and velocity. That makes it extremely versatile, and great—great—in zero-gee. Do you remember everything I told you about it?”

 
I hear your endless gushings in my sleep.
“Some of it.”

  “Then please: do this for me.” He checked the clock. “Mother of God; I’ve gotta go.
Via con Dios
, Sarge.”

  “You too.”

  The airlock squealed open, and then complained once more as it was shut.

  Leaving Grim quite alone in Rad Shack Four.

  Forty-two minutes later, the external environment monitor started an almost nasal squawking. Grim pushed himself into a slow drift toward the console, looked at the radiation sensors, inspected the rem numbers on the real-time dosimeter—and blinked. As he reached over to silence the alarms, he kept his eyes on the unprecedented numbers, and settled in to watch their unprecedented rate of increase.

  —and bumped into the XM-1 Cochrane’s oddly-vented flash-suppressor, which nudged cheekily against the side of his thigh. Grim scowled at it; okay, so it was cool to look at: a sleek, unipiece design. And, although he had refused to admit it to Mendez, he had read the stats on the weapon. If the hype had any resemblance to the truth, its nannite-reinforced composites made it light and extremely rugged. But it still looked like some flimsy piece of crap out of a sci-fi B-movie of about a hundred years ago.

  But, to hear the brass tell it, looks were apparently deceiving. With the liquid propellant stored separately from the warheads, the bullpup magazine held three times the usual number of rounds. No shell casings meant it was a sealed action, without breech or bolt: the liquid propellant was simply injected into the combustion chamber, making velocity—and therefore recoil—a function of how much was injected at any one time. The same combustion chamber was also used to boost bigger munitions out of the integral, underslung launch-tube. Grim wanted to call that a ‘grenade launcher’ but every time he did, Mendez corrected him: apparently this miracle weapon was capable of launching a variety of other, rather exotic submunitions. The Cochrane could probably turn water into wine, too, given half a chance. Grim sneered down at it: yeah, you look fancy, and the specs look impressive, but you just won’t cut it as a sturdy tool. You look like—and probably are—a kid’s toy, not a real gun: all bells and whistles, but no balls for business.

  The short-range radar emitted a strangled squawk: a partial contact, just at the edge the system’s threshold. It was probably a marginal object that, tumbling, had presented a momentarily bigger cross-section for the radar to bounce off. But the system squawked again, and this time Grim saw what had tweaked it: a faint signature, range established at seven kilometers—no, six. Then the range indicator plummeted to three, jumped up to ten, and finally zeroed out for a recalibration as the whole screen surged brightly for a moment. As it faded back into its normal contrast ratios, Grim looked up at the external weather sensors: a corresponding surge in charged particles was dying down. Which suggested that the contact was probably just an anomaly of how the storm was interacting with the trash, since the blip had appeared to be closing at exactly the same rate as today’s unusually dense sampling of debris.

  The monitor surged again, but this time, remained bright: the sensor’s overload alarm system chirped and an orange warning light glowed on the board. The automatic protection software had activated: in ten seconds, unless overridden, it would yank back the combined sensor/comm mast, sheathing it in a hardened faraday cage until it was safe to peek outside again. Grim watched the countdown ticker erode toward zero—but he reached over quickly when it hit “4” and turned the system off. The program hooted at him, asked him—in bright red block letters—“Do you wish to engage safety override?”

  Did he? Really? Grim rubbed his stubbly chin. Well, of course he didn’t: if he kept the mast extended, there was a reasonable chance that its sensitive electronics would fry, and an equal (indeed, directly proportional) chance that the brass would fry him. That—along with the system SOPs and his situationally-specific standing orders—should have decided the matter. But this situation was not the one envisioned by those standard procedures and standing orders. And that meant that Grim’s capacity to follow them was about to “fluctuate”: that was the term he had used during his first disciplinary hearing twenty-eight years ago, and had been using ever since. And he’d probably get busted a stripe for his trouble. And what for? Was there really—
really
—any danger? Even if a basketball-sized package of plastique slipped past his metal-obsessed sensors, and headed toward the Big Secret on Eureka, what harm could it do? It would have to be invisible to radar, which meant no metal, which meant no computer, which meant no terminal guidance: it was—literally and figuratively—a shot in the dark. And with all the EMP activity, there’d be no way to command-detonate such a package, unless some mad scientist had come up with a strange new piezo-electric initiator, or maybe a switch activated by timed biological decay—