War Hero by Ralph Benton

War Hero by Ralph Benton

Even under a fat layer of duranium Trooper ‘Lab Rat’ Reed trembled as he strapped himself into the driver’s pod of the tokatank called Nightmare. While death in a hundred forms lurked out there in the rebel city, more than anything he feared making a mistake. He worked among men who dealt violence like a street vendor handing out skewers of soyachick. He must not look foolish.

He wanted to feel as sleek and deadly as the Bowser, sniffing around the junked vehicles and damp wreckage strewn around the Planetary Governance armory, a walled bastion on a hill overlooking the city. The augmented canine lifted one massive leg and let go a stream of bright orange urine against a long dead tree. Eleven years of civil war had sapped the military fetish for neatness. But not for violence.

The armory gates rumbled open.

From his sealed berth Reed watched the Bowser through the Raven’s drone eyes as the animal raced after their two-vehicle convoy, shepherd to his mechanical pack. The armored beast caught up with the eight-wheeled combat jitney, commanded by Chief Taal. Nestled within sat the White Lights commando squad tasked with storming the enemy weapons laboratory. Then the animal pulled even with the scarred and battle-tested Nightmare, rumbling on point through debris-strewn streets.

The tank’s brutal railgun, mounted in the large central pod, stared down anything in their path. Three smaller pods, two on the left and one on the right, each at the end of a short, fat articulated arm, drove the machine forward on wide tracks.

Reed realized with a shock that he, frontmost of the three small pods, was the closest to enemy fire. The gunner was behind him, and the commander on the other side of the main gun. Reed kept a sweaty grip on the steering column while his eyes flickered around the seemingly endless readouts. He feared to miss anything and feared missing something while he looked at something else.

He wondered, as he wondered a hundred, a thousand times a day, and hated himself for wondering, if he would be good enough when the action started. Don’t freeze, he told himself, please don’t freeze. He forced down the bile that surged into his throat.

Commander Roget’s voice sounded in his ears, breaking the loop. “Trooper Reed, how’d you like a little excitement for your second mission?”

“Yessir, I’d like that a lot.” His voice didn’t crack, thank the gods.

“How’d you end up in tanks?” That was Manu, seemingly born in his gunner’s pod, a man so grizzled and tough Reed was afraid to step on his shadow.

“Actually I started out as a Driver/Aide on a trauma buggy.”

“Ugh, dirty work,” Manu said. “Amazing what can happen to a body and the breaths keep coming.”

Reed thought again of the limbless, faceless lieutenant trying to pulp his own head on a rock before Reed and the medic got him onto the FlyWheel and back to the buggy. He never learned if the lieutenant made it.

“But then the PG said tank school, and I just do what they tell me.” He felt small when he talked about himself.

“Well, someone’s got to drive the tank, am I right, Lab Rat?” Roget’s chuckle sifted sand through the earphones.

Reed ground his teeth. They first called him Rat at Transport school. His helmet’s chinstrap had nothing to snug under, and the visor caught on the tip of his nose. Then his sergeant learned he had studied chemistry in school, and the Lab Rat was born. But like his dad always said after the Bully Boys made their shakedown struts around the MassPopHab he grew up in, “What’re you gonna do, son, what’re you gonna do?” So he did nothing. Now he wanted to do something.

To Reed’s vast relief the small talk seemed to have satisfied Roget’s thin interest in personal outreach.

“Crew! Let’s get in and get out, clean. Like Colonel Ellington said this morning, she knows we have the guts and the firepower to cut through and get to that lab. You know those White Light bastards will grab the weapon, this new energy lens, and claim all the glory. No one will remember who drove them to the dance, and that’s fine. We’re going to shorten the war and earn ourselves a sweet combat bonus. So stay sharp and tuned in, there’s no such thing as a fun surprise out here.”

Reed touched the worn metal of his pod and took a deep breath filled with the odors of oil, electronics, and sweat. He hunkered down as the massive machine rumbled through streets lined with smoke-streaked hab towers and warehouses pock-marked with battle damage. This district had been fought over three times in the last four years, and few of the thermoplast windows remained. Reed wondered which of the thousand black spaces that stared down at them would spit his death.

“Enemy contact, 415 meters, at 320 degrees,” Manu announced in the same tone he would use to point out an unlaced boot. “Time to win some hearts and minds.” The gunner toggled an optimal firing position for Reed to fulfill. A hab complex on the far side of a smashed water purification plant sparked anger from a dozen strongpoints.

The sparks throttled Reed’s throat. They were shooting at him! PG mesmeric training triggered his hands to complete Manu’s request while he hunched his shoulders against the rebels’ barbed needles. It took a moment that lasted a lifetime for his body to break into his mind and tell himself he was safe. The surge of relief was like pure soma pumped into his skull. He saw everything, missed nothing.

“Nothing to worry about, Lab Rat, handheld and light attack only.” The commander’s words burned Reed’s face crimson. Fuck him, he wanted this fight! He started to protest, but Roget kept talking.

“Gunner, hit back.” He switched to the mission net. “Taal, keep the jitney well behind us. The Raven’s running full auto, and you don’t want to get in the way.”

The tank rocked as Manu opened with a vari-breach penetrator. Three separate charges emerged from a single round, each a little slower than the one in front of it. The first cracked the reinforced door, the second blew it open, and the third auto-resolved a meter past the initial impact point to greet the hab’s residents. As the shock wave dispersed Manu sent a round of bio-fletch into the building. Hundreds of darts sought out anything moving, with a pulse, or making a sound.

Brown fur and gleaming titanium armor slashed across the viewscreens. A girl scurrying through an abandoned lot had caught the Bowser’s attention. Her scream was brief.

“Driver, new firing position! Gunner, hit ‘em again!”

Reed maneuvered the Nightmare, always offering cover to the jitney behind them. He and Manu anticipated each other’s actions and reactions to fight as one. The tank took hits, but system diags told him that the even the heaviest weapons were doing no appreciable damage.

If Reed distilled his entire life and took the thrill of every party, every fight, every kiss, and jammed them all through a quantum amplifier, it wouldn’t come close to the excitement he felt in this moment.

He wanted to shout in primal exultation. He twitched every time the main gun fired. He willed the smoke to clear, so he could see what they were doing to the buildings. And the rebels inside.

Taal’s voice cut in. “Roget, I think we’ve got a problem here.” His voice quavered.

“Not now.” Roget had no time for that, but offered briefly, “I show you as fully within Nightmare’s protective envelope.”

Manu treated a third-floor balcony with varibreach. The bio-fletch was in the breech when the Raven swooped past their sights, its friendly beacon auto-disabling the railgun.

Reed watched a dozen tiny hummingbirds pop out of the Raven’s belly and zip through the hole the gunner had made. Seconds later came sharp pops. The Raven hovered for a moment more, scanning for life. It found none. Smoke, black and oily, swirled and eddied from the shattered buildings. A drizzle fell from low clouds.

The Bowser trotted over to a shattered storage unit and lifted his leg.

The White Lights captain came on the mission net. “Outstanding work, team. That’s exactly the kind of effort that’s going to make the Colonel proud. Let’s roll.”

“Like a rolling stone,” Manu said.

Reed thought of the skull-stretching eye rolls the gunner gave whenever someone fed him a choice piece of jabbergas. He smiled and revved the tokamak reactor. Power and glory surged into his fingertips as he maneuvered past gutted ground cars. They left desolation behind and crunched deeper into the rebel city. The jitney followed behind, the Bowser patrolled the flanks, and the Raven kept watch over them all.

Taal came back online. “Roget, listen, my diags noticed I’m running last mission’s friendly code.”

All Reed knew about friendly codes was that they were supposed to keep you from getting fragged. He started to worry about the Nightmare’s codes but decided to stick to his job.

“Well, something to mention when you’re looking to augment the mission bonus, right?” Roget sounded unconcerned. “‘Extra hazard pay,’ and all that.”

Reed envied the easy swagger in his commander’s voice.

“I can’t spend it if I’m dead.” Taal sounded a little shrill.

Reed knew there weren’t any other PG forces this deep in the city and didn’t understand why the jitney commander sounded nervous. He didn’t want to ask on the mission net, so he typed a query to Manu. The gunner responded with one word, ‘Zeus’. Now he understood.

“Commander Roget.” Taal’s official tone only highlighted the quaver in his voice. “Only the convoy commander has the permissions to query the brigade net. Please submit an immediate request to recalibrate my coding.”

Reed watched the Bowser take a long sniff at an abandoned combustion vehicle. The tires had rotted to a gray mush.

Commander Roget finally responded. “Chief Taal, if this is some kind of test, maybe you should work your wiles on my driver. But even he wouldn’t fall for this.”

Reed nodded sagely to himself. Break comm discipline on an infil mission? Ridiculous.

The jitney chief dropped all pretense. “Roget, quit fucking around, huh? I checked the orbitals, and a Zeus will be overhead soon.”

“Might be overhead,” Roget corrected. He spoke in a teacher’s voice. Reed hated teachers’ voices. “They alter trajectories at random times, to random inclinations. Anyone who wants to take on the PG has to keep their Mark I eyeball polished!”

“C’mon, Roget!” Real fear filled Taal’s voice. “Just call it in! The Zeus doesn’t give a f—”

The streak of violent violet light that lanced from the sky almost blew out the Nightmare’s visual sensors. The bolt shattered the air with a crack that splintered syncrete.

The jitney vanished in a fountain of molten metal. Dollops of armor plate, weaponry, and flesh rained down onto the Nightmare’s hull. Reed stared at the display. The elite unit had evaporated in a broken moment of searing beauty.

Roget’s voice shook. “Lab Rat, get us out of here! Full power, now!”

“Survivors, what about survivors?” He didn’t recognize his own voice. That much death confused him.

“No survivors from that,” Manu said. “We need to move. No telling what the Zeus might be thinking about us, even if we are flashing current codes.”

Reed goosed the reactor and the tokatank ripped forward through rubble and jitney fragments. Some part of Reed’s mind decided that petavolt atomization wouldn’t be the worst way to die. A lot better than the faceless lieutenant. A flashing red light caught his attention. “Commander, the Raven’s flat-lined.”

“Zeus strikes play hell with everyone’s electronics,” Roget said, “and that one was too damn close. There it goes!”

Behind them the Raven dropped to the street in a damp puff of expensive alloys.

“We should return to the depot,” Manu said. “Without eyes in the sky we’re in a rolling coffin.”

Reed’s battle courage faded to a point and popped out of existence. He realized just how intensely he wanted to walk under the sun again. Yet every living thing around them wanted their suffering and death.

No, not every living thing.

“The Bowser!” he shouted. The great beast bounded along beside the Nightmare, filled with joy at the speed and noise.

“Yes!” called Roget. “We’ve got the Bowser, we stay on mission. Keep moving. The colonel told us, this is about saving lives and shortening the war.”

“You mean it’s about collecting the mission bonus and kissing the colonel’s ass.” Manu may have resigned himself to his fate handed out this day, but he didn’t have to like it.

“That’s enough of that! Are you going to say, ‘no thanks!’ when she’s handing out creds? I didn’t think so. Reed, get us to the damn depot. We’ve got a weapon to recover.”

Reed raced the tokatank through wide boulevards. Rag-clothed refugees scrambled out of their way. He saw parks and gardens, now crowded with make-shift camps. He wondered if the city had always been this desperate, or only since the PG siege started. He thought about bonuses and wondered what would happen to Taal’s bonus.

“Boss.” Manu’s voice held a quiet demand.

“Yeah, gunner.”

“Boss, there’s no way the jitney should have rolled with outdated codes. PG issues fresh codes for every authorized mission, just so things like what just happened don’t happen. You know that.”

Silence. Reed steered them straight through a roundabout where once a fountain ran. He smashed through the statue of some forgotten hero.

“Boss.”

“What, gunner, what do you want?” Roget knew where this conversation was going and didn’t like it.

“Boss, we get friendly codes auto-assigned every time we roll, ‘cause we patrol, but the jitney only gets one when requested. Why didn’t the colonel request a fresh friendly code for the jitney?”

Reed ground his pod’s drapery armor against a series of rusting ground cars, just to make noise to fill the silence.

“Boss.”

“Goddamn it, gunner, let it go! No, this isn’t a mission that went up the chain for approval. The colonel saw a chance and she took it! That’s why she’s a colonel and you’re a goddamn ten-year tech sergeant. Now shut the hell up and keep alert.”

“Roger that, boss.” Reed admired how much obedience and scorn Manu could put into a few syllables.

If this wasn’t an authorized mission, then what was it? What sort of war were they fighting? He checked nav while his brain swirled.

“Less than five klicks,” he announced. “Coming up fast.”

“Good,” Roget said. “When we get there, gunner, you pop open their gate. Reed, you back us in so that the Nightmare can cover my excursion. I’ll go in with the Bowser and grab the lens. In and out in two minutes. Any questions?”

Reed hadn’t been a trooper for very long, but he knew there were never any questions.

“Good. This should be eas—”

Something vast and godlike smashed into the Nightmare. The tank slew around until she was facing the way they came. Nightmare used a hundred different lights and sounds to tell the crew she was hurt. Reed’s vision shimmered like a mirage and his ears rang like a fire alarm. Manu recovered first.

“Dammit, we took a dart! Boss, are you with us?” No answer. “Looks like the dart caught us right in his tread. Damn, a helluva shot, one in a thousand! I hope I can shake that man’s hand before I kill him. Driver, we’ve got to scoot!”

Manu fired off rounds of dispersed bio-fletch while Reed worked desperately to get them moving again. What was wrong with the commander’s pod? The power feed dumped juice into the motor, and the motor did it’s best to turn the treads, but nothing happened. The other two pods ground them forward meter by tortured meter. A hundred thirty tons of metal shuddered.

“Get us out of here, Reed!”

“I can’t! The commander’s pod is getting 70 percent of full power, but his treads won’t budge. The feeds are burning up.”

“Cut all power to pod one, and boost pods two and three. We’ll have to drag pod one. The bastards put a dart straight into the tread and locked the whole thing up.”

Reed diverted all power to the functioning drives. Despite the immense drag of the disabled tread they could force themselves forward. Even through the armor the continuous screech of spidersteel on pavement assaulted his ears. But the Nightmare managed a solid three meters a second.

“Good job, good job,” encouraged the gunner.

“This will tear us apart,” Reed shouted. “Pod one’s arm will shear under this kind of strain.” His breath came in short gasps. He frantically sought something, anything to do.

“Beats being dead. Speaking of, I still can’t raise the chief. Could be dead, wounded, or sitting pretty and just cut off. We’ll find out when we get back. And yes, we will get back!”

Manu’s words settled Reed’s nerves. Then something popped outside, and the tank sped up.

“Whatever you did, Reed, it worked.” Their speed doubled, then tripled.

“Not me.” He reviewed the diagnostics. The repair automation sequences had rerouted some signals, so Reed had at least partial visibility to the state of the commander’s pod. Strain gauges dropped to nominal.

“Looks like we lost the tread, and the bogies are freewheeling. No traction, but they’re not dragging!” Reed felt like the Bowser, running free and ready to kill again.

“Good enough.” Manu’s voice held iron resolve. “We’ve still got the initiative, so let’s do this thing. The chief is right, I’m not turning down that bonus. The lab’s just ahead.”

Minutes later Reed idled the reactor and Nightmare rolled to a halt.

“This is… it?” His nav confirmed the location, but it made no sense.

He didn’t know what a rebel research lab should look like, but this wasn’t it. No checkpoints or syncrete walls armed with auto-cannon towers barred their way. No exotic edifice festooned with antennae. They had parked in front of a small, one-story building. Glass windows flanked a front door, and small shrubs flanked the windows. This was, Reed realized, someone’s house. An old-fashioned house, built before the habs.

Manu answered his doubts.

“If the colonel tells us so, then yes, this is it. Obviously.” Reed heard the gunner’s smile. “The heart of rebel weapons development, just like she said.”

Reed opened his mouth to protest the absurdity. There wasn’t a guard in sight. This was no military depot.

“You go, I’ll fend off the locals,” Manu ordered. “You’re smart, but bring the Bowser with you. No telling what you might find in there.” He sounded like a father bringing his son to the madame for his first time.

Reed’s confusion dissolved into surrender. He opened the Bowser’s neural feed and gave the beast a follow and guard order. He unshackled, checked the charge on his Glock 9tV, and slid out of his pod.

Hot, fat air slathered his skin and beat him down. He peered under Nightmare’s railgun and saw nothing but shredded metal where Roget had sat.

“The commander’s not in charge anymore,” he radioed to Manu. Fear and exhilaration boosted him over the three steps to the front door where he blasted the locking mechanism and kicked the door open. The Bowser burst past him and into the house.

The Bowser snuffled through the room to the left, so he entered the room to his right. It looked just like rooms in rich people’s habs he had seen in the ‘streams. Tables of real wood, carpeted floors, and soft furniture that wasn’t poured as part of the walls. Paintings hung everywhere. Little figurines of people and animals sat on the shelves and tables. Reed had never seen so many books in one place. An odor he couldn’t place filled the house. It was rich, earthy, and made him want some. He wanted a lot of things.

The Bowser’s distant yelp snapped him back. He ran into the hall and down a staircase and into the basement. Around that corner the cream of Rover weapons research waited. The hand that gripped the Glock was steady.

An old woman sat behind a battered wooden table marked with dozens of small burns. She wore an outrageously bright, flowered dress, and a flowered headband held her thick white hair in check. The bowser stood next to her, wary, but accepting her scratches behind his ears. A rough-rolled cigarette jutted from her other hand. A layer of smoke prowled the ceiling.

“This is quite the animal you’ve got here. Does he have a name?”

Reed realized he didn’t know the Bowser’s name, and somehow that embarrassed him.

“I had dogs all my life. Used to train them.” She scratched under his chin, and the Bowser stuck out his snout so she could reach under his neck armor. “Then we started eating them.”

Her green eyes pierced him.

“Are you it?” she asked. Her voice was rough with time and scorn. “Here to vanquish evil?” She broke into a laugh that stumbled into a wet cough.

“Who are you?” Reed scanned the room. It was cluttered with yet more books and statues and paintings that judged him.

“Who am I? I’m the one who gets to ask that question, you’re the one who broke into my house.”

“Your house?” Reed didn’t have any idea what to do, so he kept asking questions.

“Wow, the A-team, I should be honored.” The old woman exhaled blue smoke. That’s what the smell was. So rich.

“You have tobacco? That’s the real stuff, isn’t it? My grandfather had a cigar once, I remember it.”

She examined him with a touch of newfound respect, as if she’d found the kitchen’s smartest cockroach. “Yes, it comes from the east. Outside the stratum cities of the coast there are specialty farms. I have friends there.”

Reed confusion was total. “You have friends in the PG? In… what’s a stratum city?”

Outside the railgun boomed, and then again. Manu spoke in his ears. “How’s it going in there? The natives are getting feisty.”

“Almost,” Reed responded. “Almost have it.”

“Have what?” she asked. “Not my virtue, surely.”

“I’m here for the lens,” Reed barked. He had to take control. He thought of Taal, of the commandos, vaporized in the quest for this weapon, and she made jokes. “We can’t let you rebels use it for your hopeless revolt.”

“Lens?”

Her confusion looked genuine, but he knew it was just another trick.

“The lens!” He struggled to remember how the colonel had described it at the mission briefing. “The hyperdense crystalized carbon matrix. Let’s have it!”

She stared at him, truly confused. Then she fully deciphered his words and burst out laughing. The pistol shifted uneasily. Why wasn’t she afraid?

“A crystallized carbon matrix!” she howled. The old woman could barely breathe through her hacking coughs and desperate laughter. She regained her breath just as she began to really piss him off.

“Major Ellington sent you.” It was not a question.

He stiffened. How did she know? “Who sent us is not important. We’re on a mission for the Planetary Governance.” But her knowledge weakened his voice, and that angered him more. He would not falter in front of this ridiculous old woman.

She ignored his protest. “I know your major. I taught her literature at the university.”

“She’s a colonel now.” Her rank empowered him, but the old woman didn’t care.

“She loved them back then. Craved them.” She lit another cigarette. “I wonder how she heard about this one.”

His headset crackled with a voice of raw delight. “I’ll give ‘em a whiff of the grape!” The tank boomed, and dust sifted from the floorboards above them. “Reed, it’s time to go!”

“You think you can stall me with your useless old stories?” He leveled the Glock at her face. “Hand it over!”

She saw something in him and shrugged. She heaved herself out of her chair and hobbled over to a shelf covered with carved heads. Not bodies, just heads. Most had knick-knacks and jewelry carelessly draped over them, medallions, beads, and more. She lifted a necklace from a head of white stone. He held out his hand, insisting she surrender the weapon. She let the slender golden links cascade into his hand.

He looked at her, ready for any trap. She shrugged, dropped back into her chair, and resumed scratching the Bowser’s ears. His tail stump wiggled.

From the slim chain hung a glistening, glittering pink jewel. His fingertip was bigger, but the gem entranced him. He held it up to the light. The stone flashed a thousand colors inside its hundred facets.

“Pretty thing, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t stop looking into it. “This is the lens?”

A spasm of pained sadness crossed her face, as if dealing with the likes of him made her bones ache. He noticed and his grip tightened on the Glock. Fuck her. She saw his anger, and her own flared.

“It’s a diamond, you bullet-headed dolt!” His finger trembled. “Your revered colonel is nothing but a common thief. Ask her about Pretoria, about Clerkenwell, about Macau. Everywhere she fights, diamonds go missing.”

His silence goaded her. “Let me guess,” she began, stubbing out her cigarette. “Covert mission? Secret weapon? No one else seems to know what’s going on?”

Another boom, and again the house trembled. “Reed!”

“And you, you just grin like the ignorant fool you are! They tell you to clear landmines with a hammer and you salute and say ‘Yes, sir!’ Bah.”

“Shut up, I’m telling you, shut up.” His voice sounded flat and dangerous in his head, but she wasn’t listening anymore. Some part of him said, it’s good she’s not listening.

“We didn’t even start this so-called ‘revolt,’ it’s just something the PG dreamed up to declare martial law! Half-wits like you drink it up, you’re like sand soaking up water, you can’t get enough. Look at you, with your gear and your guns, this is the best day of your life!”

He hated that she was right. “Shut up!”

“Reed!” Boom.

“You’re like some experiment they’re running, ‘Can we breed some poor bastard smart enough to steal a diamond from an old woman, but too dumb to ask why?’ Well I think they succeeded. Look at you, look at the lab rat!”

He shot her right in the eye. The impact flung her back in her chair so she faced the ceiling. The stench of burned blood and hair displaced the aroma of tobacco. A thin wisp of steam rose from the eye socket. The Bowser wagged his tail at the delicious smells, and licked the goo oozing out of her ear.

Reed bent over and vomited. After a moment he stood and wiped his mouth.

“Coming out,” he called to Manu. “Give ‘em hell!”

&&&

Colonel Ellington’s victory reception felt empty without Roget, Taal, and the commando squad. To fill the reception hall of the old manor house her aides had invited civilian guests and piped in martial music. Gaity was encouraged with plenty of good food and somahol. Reed couldn’t decide if the real beef in the buffet or actual wood burning in the fireplace astounded him more.

He felt out of place among the two dozen sleek courtiers who chatted easily under the high ceiling. Crisply uniformed staff movxed silently among them. Reed thought of the old lady’s words. He thought again of the limbless lieutenant.

An aide muted the music, and the colonel stepped into the silence. Reed stood a little straighter.

“Soldiers of the Planetary Government of Earth! Today we made the greatest sacrifice, that of our comrades.” She pitched her voice lower. “They shall never be forgotten.”

She raised her glass to the glorious memory, and everyone saluted with theirs in return. She drained her champagne, and eyed the room through slitted lids. With a flourish she flung the glass into the fireplace. The crash startled the disarmored Bowser, who was snoozing next to the crackling flames.

“But you accomplished the mission! The mission always comes first. And missions are where heroes are made. Isn’t that right, Trooper Reed?”

Reed stood on shifting feet as the gathering applauded. He heard Manu’s heavy, slow clap somewhere behind him. The colonel strode forward, and he stiffened to attention.

“Trooper Reed, for your actions in the field this day, I award you the bronze star.” She pinned a medal on his chest. “That comes with a thousand credit valor bonus, you know,” she added with a smile. The crowd laughed warmly at his good fortune. The colonel had a good smile, but he liked the bonus more.

“Further,” she announced, in her colonel voice, “given your demonstrated abilities in ways tactical, technical, and personal, I am awarding you an immediate promotion to sergeant.” The room applauded again, with genuine enthusiasm.

Reed was stunned. Trooper to sergeant in one step? He wondered what Manu would say.

“Thank you, ma’am, I’m honored,” he managed to stammer.

The colonel laughed. “I’m just glad you’re fighting on our side.” An aide handed her fresh champagne. “To Sergeant Reed!”

Again glasses were drained and the party resumed. “Walk with me.” She turned toward the fireplace, granting him the additional honor of a private, informal conversation.

“You like being a tanker?” she asked.

“Oh, yes ma’am.” He knew short answers were best. Power doesn’t need complicated heroes.

She stopped under a painting of a man in an old-fashioned uniform, sitting on a horse. He stared down at Reed with judging eyes. Like the paintings in the old woman’s house.

She handed him her glass, then opened his tunic pocket. “Some officers,” she said in a casual voice, “retain the mission bonuses of anyone who doesn’t come back. ‘For the strain of command,’ they say.” She started slipping small plastic chits into his pocket. The black ones. “I do not.” More chits dropped. “Those who come back get the bonus of those who don’t.”

The small clicking sounds eroded Reed’s unease. “Will Commander Roget’s family be taken care of?”

“The usual pension.” She smiled again. “I prefer,” she said, shutting and patting his bulging pocket, “soldiers who bring their luck to the battlefield.”

She took back her champagne. Beneath her tunic, on a golden chain, something pink and brilliant flashed.

“You killed today, in a moment of intimacy that most of us will never know. Ghastly, but necessary. Not everyone can do that.” She regarded him. “So I guess I need a new tokatank commander. Someone who will do what needs to be done. If you think of someone,” and here she looked directly at him, “please see me personally.”

“I’ll do that, ma’am.”

“The good news is,” she said brightly, “it only gets easier.” She walked back to her coterie.

Reed saw futures opening before him, like the room had a hundred doors.

Manu startled him from behind. “Don’t worry. You’ll make a fine sergeant.”

“I’m not worried.” He surprised himself with the truth of this.

“No, you’re not.” The gunner nodded his head approvingly.

“You get your bonus?” Reed asked. He saw the dust embedded in the deep wrinkles in the gunner’s face, and the emptiness in the back of his eyes.

Manu nodded and patted his pocket. “Roget was right, I didn’t say no.” He turned to put his back to the room. “You, uh, want a spot of drift?” He pulled a small round tin from deep within his uniform.

“Drift?” Reed couldn’t hide his shock. “Won’t they bounce you for that?”

The gunner took a fat pinch from the tin and snuffled some into each nostril. Immediately he seemed to both relax and energize. “Nah, as long as the war’s on they need me.” He rubbed his nose vigorously. “After the war…” He shrugged. That day was far off.

“The army’s all right, it really is. Better than being out there. And you’ve got the knack.” The gunner’s face softened into sadness as he looked at the young man. “The bad news is, it only gets easier.”

Reed touched the pocket of his tunic. He thought of the Bully Boys, and refugees running in the rain. He remembered how his heart leapt every time the railgun fired.

“You know,” he told Manu, “I’ve always been more of a good news kind of guy.”

He walked over to Colonel Ellington.

THE END

Copyright Ralph Benton 2021