Stark's War (4 page)

Most of the civs hastily raised their hands toward the rough ceiling, suddenly sweating despite the cool of the room. As the others were trying to decide, Murphy arrived, carrying the wounded man, who was white with shock but still breathing. Every other hand shot up as the scientists absorbed the sight, leaving only the angry female civ still defiant. "You killed him," she half demanded, half questioned.

"He'll live," Stark advised coldly. "Anybody else who threatens my people will get the same treatment."

The civ clenched her fists. "I will not grant legitimacy to your actions by cooperating."

"Whatever." Stark looked toward Gomez and hooked a thumb in the direction of the female civ. "Take her down."

Even with her expression obscured by her faceplate, Stark knew Gomez was grinning as she stepped forward, swinging her rifle butt in a swift blow against the civ's left shin. As the civ collapsed with a gasp of pain, Gomez reversed the weapon's motion to catch her on the chin, then dropped to one knee beside the dazed woman, expertly locking a pair of Dally-Cuffs around her wrists. The Dallys tightened automatically, their composite fibers forming an unbreakable second skin just above the civ's hands. "You can try cutting these off,
Senora"
Gomez advised the civ in a pleasant conversational tone, "but if you do, you'll bleed to death.
¿Comprendo?"

The civ nodded numbly, allowing herself to be shepherded with the other prisoners into a corner of the room. "Lieutenant?" Stark called over the command circuit. "We've taken possession of the objective."

"Roger. Any resistance?"

"One apparent law officer wounded. Noncritical."

"Too bad. Brigade Staff is already complaining the assault lacks enough combat action."

Stark took a deep breath, staring angrily toward nothing. "We didn't suffer any casualties, Lieutenant."

"That's fine, Sergeant. An APC should be by your position in about thirty minutes to pick up your prisoners. Don't let them build any nukes in the meantime."

"Yessir." Stark's angry stare shifted to the civ scientists, standing next to stacks of equipment he couldn't identify. "Gomez, make sure they don't touch nothing. And I mean nothing. If one of them reaches to scratch their butt I want their hand broken."

"Si, Sargento.
You guys hear the Sergeant?" Gomez asked the civs, all now standing so rigidly still that few even risked nodding in reply to the question. "Good. No trouble, then. I don't like fighting people who can't fight back. But I will."

Stark didn't relax, restlessly patrolling the halls of the lab complex, scanning for threats, until the APC had come and gone, running thirty minutes later than the half hour promised. Desoto showed up on the same APC, disgruntled at missing the assault despite the lack of action. "I should've been with the Squad," he protested to Stark.

"Sure, then we could've spent the whole action trying to keep you from baking inside your suit. I've got enough things to worry about during an attack without adding that."

Desoto stared at the floor for a moment, then nodded. "You're right, Sergeant. I shouldn't have complained."

"Hell," Stark said with a grin, "you can always complain, Pablo. That's the one thing the mil can never take away from you." The smile faded into grim seriousness. "In a combat situation I can't spend time thinking about anything but the job. My feelings don't matter and neither do yours. Neither do the likes and dislikes of every ape in this Squad. You're a Corporal, Pablo. You gotta remember that. I'll bust you if you don't and promote someone who can."

Desoto hung his head again. "Truth. I won't forget, Sergeant." He peered around, taking in the portions of the lab complex he could see. "How much longer we going to be here?"

"If we're lucky, maybe quite a while. They had about twenty civs billeted here, with a full kitchen in the bargain. All the comforts of home, plus the power plant that supplies this place got taken over by some combat engineers from Second Battalion, so we've got no worries there."

"Wow." Desoto's elation quickly faded into gloom.

"Some officers from staff will take it over as soon as they hear about it."

"Nah. I hear there's a lot of places nicer than this." The ability to see basic accommodations as a luxury was one of the few benefits of the living arrangements soldiers usually had to accept.

"Sarge?" Murphy called from the room they'd designated their command post. "We got a call for you from Sergeant Reynolds."

Reynolds looked comfortable on the comm screen, lounging in a chair that would have been nicely upholstered on Earth but was ridiculously overstuffed for the fractional gravity on the Moon. "Everything secure, Ethan?"

"No problems," Stark reported. "What's the word?"

"Might as well settle in," Vic advised. "Orders are to occupy the installations we seized until further notice."

"That's it? Not that I'm complaining. They've got some good rooms here. But no digging in?"

"No digging in. The brass don't want anything damaged in case we have to trade back some of what we just grabbed."

"Fine. When the counterattack comes, we'll just surrender quietly."

Vic grinned. "There's no counterattack in the offing, Ethan. It appears we're the only mil on the Moon right now."

"You think it's going to stay that way?"

"I don't know. It takes a while to get here, though, so you can sleep easy tonight."

"Maybe," Stark half-agreed, visibly uncomfortable.

Vic shook her head. "What's eating you, Ethan? Lighten up. Combat's over."

"Combat hasn't happened yet," Stark disagreed. "I'll lighten up when we're back home in garrison."

"Suit yourself." Vic mustered another smile. "My Squad occupied the supervisors' housing for this area. Civ bosses live good, Ethan."

"Figures. So where's the Lieutenant going to stay?"

"Here." Vic somehow kept smiling.

Stark smiled back this time. "Ain't that nice? A few months, maybe, with the Lieutenant breathing down your neck twenty-four hours a day. Have fun, Sergeant Reynolds."

"I will. But don't worry. I don't relax too much when I'm on the line, Ethan."

"You're not a new recruit, Vic. Sorry if I sounded like I thought you were. Hell, you're better than me." Stark chewed his lower lip, eyes hooded in thought. "I don't like this idea of not digging in. Do the brass really think the guys we took this stuff from are just going to accept it?"

"Apparently. Or settle for us handing back a little."

"Vic, we've fought against some of the people whose property we just grabbed, and alongside some of the others."

"Technically, by act of Congress, Ethan, it's our property. We just took possession."

"Sure. The corporations back home who own our politicians don't like the idea of all these First, Second, and Third World types getting their hands on all the goodies up here."

"They're the only goodies left, Ethan. We've got all the goodies back on Earth sewed up. There's advantages to being the only superpower. If you play it smart, you can stay the only one."

Stark grimaced. "Sure. Like I said, Vic, we know these people. They're tired of being held down so we can stay on top, and they're not going to take this quiet and peaceful."

Vic shrugged in reply. "Not our call, Ethan. Careful, you sound like a Third World symp."

"I'm just tired of being ordered to fight and die just so some big shots can get a little richer. Pax America, hell. There's nothing pax about getting ordered into combat everywhere on Earth and now on this godforsaken hunk of rock."

"I thought you liked your accommodations," Vic teased.

"Nothing wrong with the rooms. I just don't like where they're located."

"Wrong sector?"

"Wrong planet. Or Moon, or whatever. Vic, this is one ugly place. There's nothing living out there. It's dead. Totally dead."

"You better hope so. Would you be happier if a hostile battalion of mechanized infantry was outside your front door?"

"Very funny." Stark shivered, cold despite the calm efficiency of his battle armor's thermostat. "Vic, there's no grass or anything. Just rocks."

"I thought you didn't like grass, though you've never said why."

"I don't. But I like dead less." Stark fought down another shudder. "It doesn't help that it's such a big change. You know, from Earth, especially our last operation. I didn't like it there, but I like it here less."

Five months before, they'd been on a peace-enforcement op on an island where the indigs didn't appreciate the efforts of outsiders to keep them from killing each other. An island crawling with so much life you had to fight your way through the vegetation and hope the assorted poisonous creatures that lived in it wouldn't also get in the way. So much life that losing a few pieces of it here and there didn't seem to matter one way or the other.

"History can be a terrible burden," Mendoza had observed, and that particular island had enough history to bury any trace of common sense. The one thing the locals were able to agree on was that, if they were going to be restrained from internecine murder, then killing peace enforcers was the second-best option. Especially since the peace enforcers were actually only there to keep things quiet enough for oil corporations hired by a corrupt government-in-exile to search for and exploit the island oil reserves that had become increasingly rare and valuable as the twenty-first century wore on.

It had been an ugly op, running patrols through heavy vegetation, scanning constantly for booby traps, worrying about when the next bomb would go off in the latrines. It didn't help that the island, like every other hot spot, was overloaded with ancient but still deadly firearms left over from the last century's Cold War. Stark and the other soldiers were used to encountering that state of affairs, but that didn't make it any nicer to deal with. "I thought the old M-16 had all these problems with jamming and stuff," Stark grumbled to Vic.

"Yeah," she agreed. "So?"

"So how come so many M-16s are still working good enough to throw lead at us?"

"Simple, Ethan," Reynolds said with a laugh. "We sold all the good ones to other countries. Probably made a lot of money. By the way, how's your ammo quota holding up?"

"Lousy."

Technically, the country benefiting from the peace enforcement ops was supposed to be paying for the soldiers, but that assumed the country either had a functioning government or that most of the available money wasn't being dumped into untraceable bank accounts. Since there wasn't enough funding to support much ammunition expenditure, the requirement usually got wished away. "It's a peace operation, not a war," one of the American officers lectured sternly. "You don't need excess ammunition. It will only encourage unduly aggressive actions."

Stark glowered at the ground. Lectures seemed to be as inevitable a part of war as bullets and beans. This one, derisively labeled Peace 101, covered the very important Rules of Engagement. Stark liked knowing the circumstances under which he could legally shoot back at allegedly pacified natives armed with heavy weapons and hostile attitudes. "If you are fired upon," they were ordered, "it is probably an attempt to provoke some military action that would discredit our mission. Therefore, you are not—repeat, not—to return fire unless and until actual damage has been inflicted."

It took a moment to digest all that. Then Stark raised one hand, his face stubborn. "So you're telling us that if the indigs shoot at us and miss, we can't return fire. We gotta wait until they hit us."

"That is correct."

"So, what if we're dead at that point? Are we allowed to, you know, bleed on them? Or are we supposed to die in a way that doesn't bother anybody?"

"You are completely missing the point," the officer declared with every evidence of exasperation. "You will not die, Sergeant. This is a peace enforcement mission."

A soldier in First Squad had raised her hand at that point. "If it's so peaceful, why do they need us here at all?"

Captain Disrali, their Company Commander of the moment, stood long enough to face his company, his expression put-upon. "There will be no more questions. Or comments. From anyone. Just listen to the damn briefing." He sat down again, back to the troops.

Stark leaned toward Reynolds. "Guess he won't be leading any patrols in person," he whispered.

"He wouldn't know how," Reynolds sniffed. "He's only here for his war-hero tour so he can pin on a Bronze Star he didn't earn and get promoted to Major."

"Just so long as he stays out of our way. We got enough problems with this op without adding obstacles."

Vic nodded. "Speaking of obstacles, did you notice the inhibits they've placed on our weapons?"

"Yeah. They'll only fire one clip per week. Not a round of ammo more. As if."

"Bullets cost bucks, Ethan."

"So do bandages and body bags. Anyway, the corporations pulling oil out of this rotting heap of dung they call an island are making plenty enough to fork over a few more dollars for ammo. I already got the work-around so we can fire on auto all week long if we want. That Corporal in Sanchez's Squad hacked it up yesterday. You need a download?"

"Yeah," Vic chuckled. "Thanks. You ever follow the rules, Ethan?"

"Only when they make sense to me."

"That must not be too often."

The only thing worse than the lectures were the patrols, trying to pacify chunks of territory where villages now consisted of marks on their maps that simply memorialized burned-out foundations and lost lives. Oil pipelines were blown up with such regularity that headquarters produced a standardized form to report the damage, every incident increasing the oil company demands for soldiers to be placed on guard every two meters along the lines, demands that headquarters had so far resisted, not out of any pure motives but simply because there weren't enough soldiers available to implement the ridiculous scheme.

Stark found himself covering twice as much territory as the rest of his Squad, trying to keep them dispersed enough to avoid providing tempting targets but close enough together that stragglers couldn't be picked off unnoticed in the thick vegetation. "Murphy, you worthless excuse for a soldier, if you drop behind again I'll shoot you and save the in-digs the trouble."