Gettysburg: A Tale of the Second War for Pennsylvanian Independence (2 page)

Hatch nodded. “Bag the tag and let’s go. This whole
one-soldier-only thing is making me nervous. Too good to be true and all that.”

At that moment, Hawkeye’s voice whispered in their heads. “Dropship.
Ten clicks.”

Stug withdrew a plastic bag for the exhumed BICE as Hatch
stood up.

“Bravo Squad, fortify and prepare to cover our retreat.
Hawkeye, Bracer, we’ll be out in five, four—”

“Bagged,” reported Stug as he slung the dead porter’s laser
rifle over his shoulder.

The lieutenant motioned him out and covered his back as the
big man lumbered across the distance to their embankment.
Seems longer going
back
, thought Hatch, though he did so in protected mode, keeping his
thoughts private, off their shared BICE channel. Once the sergeant was safely
back in the ditch, Hatch followed.

“Thirty seconds,” reported Hawkeye. “Only one that I
can—damn it! Drones.”

Transport drones zipped over the warehouses on the south
side of town, zeroing in on the lieutenant as he leapt into the ditch.

“Alpha Squad, we’ve got your backs. Go go go!” said Lieutenant
“Trick” Mason, Hatch’s counterpart in Bravo Squad.

“Peel off,” ordered Hatch, clipped and precise. “Bracer,
go.”

“Yes sir.”

Standard operating procedure. The man with the heaviest
weapon gets to run first.

It was the spotter’s turn next. “Hawkeye.”

“Lieutenant, I’ve got the eyes here, I should—”

“Were you awake the day they taught you to follow orders?
Move!”

With no time to argue, the spotter dropped his omni-lens to
his chest and ran for Bravo Squad and the safety of the trees.

Hatch could feel the white noise building in his brain. It
was expected. Transport had learned how to aim a jamming signal at rebel BICEs
to disrupt their communications, and they tended to deploy the strategy any
time they were in range. No one, not even the SOMA, had yet figured out why
only rebel implants were affected.

“Shut down BICEs, go to visual,” sent Hatch as he followed
Hawkeye, leaping over the ditch and running for the tree line. He powered down
his BICE and felt the usual light nausea as its constant stream of information,
projected in his mind, suddenly went dark and vacant. It almost felt like he’d
lost his eyesight for a moment, and he half-stumbled. He saw Bracer go down on
all fours as he succumbed to his own shutdown process, then watched the heavy-weapons
man right himself again. The hundred pounds on his back slowed him down, but he
resumed his loping, mad dash for Bravo Squad.

Precise laser strikes burned the plain behind Hatch. This
was no lone soldier with a laser rifle. This was a dropship’s gunner, whose sole
purpose was to hit what he was aiming at from a moving air vehicle. The
lieutenant quickened his step. Bracer made it to the trees and dove past the
18-millimeter machine gun deployed by Bravo Squad. It peppered the sky.

“Aim that bloody thing higher!” bellowed Stug as he, too, pounded
through the tall grass and past the thundering
thrrrit-thrrrit-thrrrit
of
Bravo’s machine gun.

Hatch dove right, rolled, and popped upright again, the
nausea all but gone. If he was lucky, between the threat of Bravo Squad and his
own light feet, he might outmaneuver the dropship before it killed him.

The gravimetric servos keeping the enemy’s ship in the air
whined closer, broken up by the screech of its laser cannon. The dropship
gunner and Bravo Squad’s heavy-weapons man faced off like they were playing an
old-fashioned game of chicken, each determined to force the other out of the firefight.
Hatch saw the grass catch fire to his right as Hawkeye passed into the trees.

“Come on, officer, sir!” yelled Stug, his voice carrying
incredibly over the mayhem. “I’m too old to have to train a new lou!”

Hatch ground his teeth, veering left. It was a mistake. His
foot went deep into a smoking hole left by the tracking fire, and he stumbled
jerkily, falling to his knees. As if hungry and aware of its prey’s
vulnerability, the dropship intensified its laser fire, the heat of a blast
slicing the back of Hatch’s leg. He collapsed forward, his face slamming into
the charred dirt.

Distantly, he heard voices as time slowed down. Stug railing
at Bravo Squad. Trick giving his troops orders. The almost calming flutter of
the dropship engines. Slowly, painfully, he turned over onto his back. The first
afternoon in July boasted the bluest sky he’d ever seen.

He heard a crack, a boom, and a long note warping up in
scale, like a violin arcing upward from a low major to a high minor key. Then a
Doppler shift in the pitch of the noise, and he knew the dropship was moving
away from him. The laser fire had ceased. He turned his head and followed the
Transport ship as it swooped back toward the town. Tracer fire from the
18-millimeter continued harassing the enemy ship as it limped away, still aloft
but slowly descending.

Hands on him. Big hands.

“Now I have to sling you too?” whined the sergeant. For
once, the gravelly, nasal voice sounded downright divine.

Hatch felt himself lifted like a five-pound sack of potatoes,
then suddenly found he was looking at an upside-down canteen, two sonic
grenades with their triggers pointing strangely upward, and the not
insubstantial mass of Stug’s ass. That’s when he passed out.

Standing alone in the hastily erected field tent, the captain
of Bestimmung Company—dubbed the QB by her soldiers—stared down at the hastily
drawn map of the area. Normally, the Internet would’ve supplied any needed
information via the BICE device, but they were under blackout conditions now.
No unauthorized Internet traffic until further notice, lest the Authority tag
an access attempt and run their location down like a hound treeing a possum.

That’s a phrase Poppa might’ve used
.

The thought came unbidden, an unwanted echo from the past.
Or at least, it
felt
unwanted. It always took a little time to get used
to her inner voice again after shutting down the BICE. When the device was on,
a channel of chatter buzzed in her head constantly, except during sleep.
Someone was always asking for orders or giving them, discussions somewhere else
required the QB’s attention, or she’d be on the Internet researching and
planning. Or, more rarely, she’d simply be escaping all the order-giving,
researching, and planning by doing a little mindless surfing. It was during
those times she popped Q and, usually, slept in a stupor. Sometimes it was the
only way she slept.

But now, in the cavernous silence of her own head, that
inner voice—the one that cajoled, encouraged, scolded, challenged, and oo-rahed
her—was loud and clear. She’d thought of the voice as her only friend when she
was detained by Transport as a child. On the days when Gutierrez would question
her, she’d simply disconnect from reality, ignore him, and her inner voice would
tell her everything would be okay. It would play games with her, distract her
from his fumbling attempts to extract her cooperation. He was new at his job
then, not very efficient, and she had been very young.

Now when the voice spoke, it just reminded her of that time.
And thus it was unwanted.

You don’t really believe that.

The QB jerked her head, as if she could knock the voice out
of her ear and onto the floor. “I don’t have time for this right now,” she
whispered.

Okay, that I’ll grant you.

The tent flap pushed inward. Trick, of Bravo Squad.

“Captain, Stug—er, Sergeant Miller—is waiting outside.”

She nodded, staring back at the map. Alpha Squad’s spotter,
Hawkeye, had drawn it for her based on the GIS surveys he’d pulled up during
their firefight.

“Send him in.”

Trick saluted and held the canvas flap aside for the
lumbering Sergeant Miller.
Stug
, she reminded herself. The QB liked to
encourage her soldiers’ familiar names for one another, even used them herself
on occasion. It promoted unit cohesion, made them fight harder for one another,
like shield brothers in Ancient Greece. TRACE needed every advantage it could
get in this war. Lord knew they had enough working against them. The odd
realization struck her that no nickname had ever really stuck for Hatch. He was
just “Hatch” to everyone.

“That’ll be all, Lieutenant,” she said, nodding her head.
“Thank you.”

As Bravo Squad’s leader exited the tent, Stug came to
attention. Not easy for someone of his height in the tiny space. He looked a
bit like Atlas, recently relieved of the Earth on his shoulders, but still a
bit hunched over and stiff. The top of his bald head brushed the tent’s canvas.

“Sergeant,” she acknowledged.

“Captain. Ma’am. QB.” Stug winced at the slip.

Her inner voice smiled at his stuttering. It was rare for
him to report to her; usually Hatch did. Clearly it made him uncomfortable.

And there it was again, her own familiar name among the
troops.
The QB
. Her commanding officer had given it to her a long time
ago. It supposedly referred to an old Earth sport, to the team leader, the
quarterback, who called the plays on the field. She knew better. Once, when
she’d come into conflict with the good colonel, he’d called her a princess, a
Queen Bee. She’d taken some pride in that in the moment. Bucking authority was
in her nature. It made her an original thinker, not always considered an asset by
the military hierarchy. Later, she’d learned he’d meant Queen B. And the B
wasn’t shorthand for a buzzing insect.

But instead of fighting it, she’d made it her own, even
encouraged its use by not stamping it out. And anyway, it was better than the
other name they had for her. Old Granny. At 37, she was the oldest company
commander in TRACE.

“Give me your report, Stug,” she said, pushing past the
memories.

The sergeant smiled at her use of his nickname. He actually
stood up a little straighter, which only made him appear to be wearing the tent
for a turban.

“Well, ma’am, we didn’t get any further than the outskirts
of the town when we hit the guard post. One man pinned us in a ditch till we
took him out.”

Succinct, to the point. Part of her liked the efficiency of
it. Another part was frustrated by the lack of detail.

“Show me,” she said, nodding at the map.

Stug came around. “Here’s the ditch we were in. And here’s
the post. Bravo Squad was in this tree line, covering us. The dropship came
from the town proper,” he said, pointing to the map’s eastern edge.

The tent was small and the sergeant was large. He still
smelled like battle. Sweaty and acrid, the heavy grit of weapons fire mixed
with the sharp scorch of lasers. Ever since she was a child, men in uniform
looming over her had filled her with fear. Even sometimes, like now, when the
man was her subordinate and had no idea of the response he was evoking in her.

And never will
, promised her inner voice.

Nodding solemnly, she moved around to the other side of the
table, as if getting a better position to consider the strategic situation.

“How many drones?”

Stug stared at the map, as if doing so might show him their
number on the paper.

“Unknown. Hawk said they were coming, but once the dropship
got hit, we were outta there. Never made contact.”

The QB factored that information into the battle assessment
forming in her head.

“If we sent out our own drones to reconnoiter, maybe circle
around the town, they could help us get a better picture,” offered Stug.

Isn’t that sweet? He’s trying to be helpful
, her inner
voice said.

You’re not
, she responded.

“True. We could also lose the only advantage we have if they
get shot down,” she said patiently. “We have no idea of the size of the force
inside the town. There could be an entire Transport division there, waiting for
us.”

There was silence for a moment. Stug shifted on his feet.
His fold of turban tickled his dome.

“Do you have something to add, Sergeant?”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am.” He was slow to start. He hated
arguing with an officer. But he hated the right answer going unspoken even
more. “But we
do
know there’s not a division there.”

The QB raised an eyebrow.

“If there was a division there, we wouldn’t have made it
back. We saw one man in a frontier guard post, one dropship with how many
troops inside? Didn’t get a chance to find out. And a handful of drones that
never actually made it to the battlefield.”

“Do go on.”

“My guess? A platoon, maybe less, widely dispersed around
the town. If the enemy was there in force, one man alone wouldn’t have pinned
us down for so long. They would’ve reinforced sooner. And they would’ve pressed
the attack, not run for the hills because our gunner plinked one dropship’s
engine.”

She looked down at the map again. “So what do you advise?”