Stark's Crusade (28 page)

"I could use a little humor about now."

"I don't mean 'funny' ha-ha, I mean 'funny' strange." Stark studied the Mixing Bowl work as he spoke. "I'm looking at everything goin' on over there, and I'm thinking: 'Alright. That's how we do things.'"

"Excuse me?"

"That's how we do things. Americans. We build stuff. Look at it! Moving dirt, throwing together structures, doing big things. It's kind of cool, ain't it? We're Americans. We build stuff."

"Ethan, you're hopeless. I hate to break your bubble, but the only reason they're building stuff over there is so they can come over here and break stuff. Including you and me."

"I know. I know. So what's all this making
you
think about?"

Vic spoke meditatively, as if she were still thinking through her ideas. "A couple of things. Stacey handed me some new information just before we came out here."

"Good or bad?"

"Is it ever good? She has it reliably that some of the bodies in the Second Division Brigade over there were brought in from other units."

"We knew that. They had to pull them from the other brigades in the division."

"No, Ethan, I mean units from outside Second Division. There's a number of survivors from Third Division in there."

"Third Division." Stark stared across the distance again, remembering the shattered remnants of Third Division, rescued by his mutiny, then sent home if they chose. Most had chosen that, including Stark's old friend Sergeant Rash Paratnam.
Rash, you turned me down flat when I asked you to join us. Hell, you almost bit my head off. But, then, your sister had just been killed and I'd been the one to tell you about it. Now, you might be over there. What if we end up in each other's rifle sights? Maybe I
am
in hell
"Any names?"

"No." A pause. "I had some friends in that unit, too. But it gets worse."

"I'm not sure I want to know."

"Those people from Fifth Battalion. The mutineers we sent home in exchange for some more family members of people up here. They're with that Second Division force, too."

"Why the hell they'd do that? You think they're volunteers?"

"I seriously doubt it. They probably got sent because they're lunar vets, Ethan. That kind of experience is seriously lacking among those Second Division troops."

"You're probably right. Damn. We were already wondering if we'd be able to shoot at other Americans. Knowing some of them personally doesn't help things."

"But we know they're willing to shoot at us. They did during the mutiny, anyway."

"Yeah." Stark ran through the Fifth Battalion soldiers in his head, trying to remember each of the thirty soldiers who had been too heavily involved in the mutiny to be let off lightly. "No. Knowing all that doesn't help much. You said a couple of things, though. What's the other one?"

"I'm starting to wonder if we've missed something important about these Jabberwocks."

"How do you mean?"

"Laying here, looking at that dead zone they're going to cross, I started imagining how our orders would have been laid out in our Tacs. The brass would have spelled out every step we were supposed to take. Right?"

"I won't forget that soon. We've figured the Jabberwocks would just have some sorta super Tacs to do the same thing."

"But that's important, Ethan. Think about it. We always had strict orders laid down in our Tacs; do this, go here, do that. The Jabberwocks are going to have the same sort of thing, right?"

"Sure."

"But when we ran into something unexpected, something the Tacs didn't allow for, what would we do?"

Stark couldn't shrug in his battle armor, but he made the gesture mentally. "Improvise. Work around it. Whatever . . . I think I see what you're driving at."

"Uh-huh. The brass has always wanted soldiers who didn't think, who just followed orders to the letter. Okay, they've got them at last in the form of these Jabberwocks. And the fact that there's no link means the Jabberwocks are going to be dependent on their Tacs for their courses of action."

"So if we screw up that planned course of action?"

"Bingo. They're going to have to think for themselves. We may not have their reflexes or speed, but I'll lay you odds we can handle combat situations better than any AI they could pack into those things."

Stark studied his scan, viewing his own defenses in the area and the lay of the terrain. Exact positions of defenses were rarely identified, but the Jabberwocks had to be programmed to attack the general locations where bunkers were known to be.
Yeah. We can mess with whatever a Jabberwock uses for a mind. Can't hurt. Might help a lot.
"Thanks, Vic. I'm glad you're on my side."

"Ah, shucks. I bet you say that to all the girls." Stark saw Vic's symbology begin moving backward. "For now, I think I'll get out of immediate range of the enemy. Are you coming?"

"In a few minutes." Stark lay on the ridge, in his battle armor, on the dead surface of the Moon, watching the preparations in the Mixing Bowl to attack his forces, and feeling perfectly at home.

If meetings could solve every problem they faced, Stark reflected, then there shouldn't be any problems left by this point. "This is likely to be the last staff meeting before the big attack goes down. I want everyone to think, real hard, about anything we haven't considered. Little things or big things. What kind of questions do we need answered?"

Stacey Yurivan smiled vacantly, affecting a spaced-out voice. "Why are we here?"

"To make my life difficult, Stace. I take it you have nothing new to report?"

"Not really. The demonstrations back home are getting bigger. Everybody apparently liked hearing you confirm the earlier reports that we weren't planning on dropping into D.C. to party hard. That was a decent job planting those reports to set the stage for your interview, by the way."

"Thanks. The government helped me do it."

"So I understand. Apparently it hasn't been able to prove your father's connection to the reports, though. Still, the whole mess is putting more pressure on the government to put up or shut up. They're promising to end the rebellion and recover this Colony by the end of the month."

Vic checked the calendar on her display. "That only leaves them about a week."

"Very good, Reynolds. Have a donut. Yeah, I can't imagine the generals that are running this op are pleased to have the politicians localizing their attack date. Ummm, what else? There was another big drop in the stock market because some of the countries whose contracts with corporations have been enforced by American soldiers are taking advantage of the lack of said soldiers to renege on the contracts. Just the usual political, economic, and social turmoil."

"Commander Stark?" All eyes shifted to look at Private Mendoza. "I have been wondering if our countermeasure against the Jabberwocks may not already be known to the government."

"The nano rounds?" Stark frowned. "Why do you say that? I mean, no security is perfect, but we've kept the nano rounds pretty quiet."

"Yes, sir. But the fact that we put down the mutiny without killing any mutineers has been widely discussed within the Colony. It has even been transmitted to Earth by various means and reported by the vid stations there. And, of course, we sent some of the mutineers back to Earth. Even though they lacked direct knowledge of the weapon we used to disable their armor, they could have described the effects."

"That's right." Stark rubbed his chin, gazing around the table. "Has there been enough information in any of that to clue the Pentagon in to the fact that we used nanobots to disable the mutineers' battle armor? Stacey? Vic?"

Vic shook her head. "We don't know. But, if there was, the Pentagon may have had an unusual attack of common sense and realized that if we could use nanobots against battle armor, we could also use them against Jabberwocks. They might already be working on countermeasures. Mendoza, I sure wish you'd thought of this earlier."

"I am sorry, Sergeant Reynolds, I only just—"

"That's okay, Mendo," Stark broke in. "We won't get down on you because you just thought of something the rest of us never did. So, worst case, assume Mendo is right, and the Pentagon knows about the nano rounds. What'll they be doing?"

Lamont spread his hands. "Working on countermeasures. What else?"

"Sure. What kind of countermeasures? The Jabberwocks already would've been armored and camo'd as well as possible. What could they do to stop nano rounds?"

There was a babble of replies as his staff hurled suggestions. "Spaced armor? Would that work?"

"No. How about improved point defenses?"

"Against rifle rounds? No way. Maybe make 'em faster, harder to hit at all—"

"They can only do that by taking off armor! Why would—"

The debate subsided as Bev Manley rapped the table. "You're forgetting something, people. If the Pentagon has figured out we used nano rounds, they might have made some of their own. We might be facing that weapon, too. Which means we have to figure out how to defend
ourselves
from it."

Vic rubbed her forehead as if fighting off a headache. "This just keeps getting worse."

Stacey Yurivan smiled. "We could handle it the traditional way the brass deals with stuff that might interfere with our plans. Pretend it's not there and keep the plan unchanged."

"Thanks, Stace. Keep chiming in with those helpful observations." Vic glared around the table. "Okay. Assume we're defending against nano rounds. How would we do it?"

An uncomfortable silence stretched for long moments, until Lamont made another helpless gesture. "You've got to assume you're going to get hit, sooner or later."

"Fine," Stark agreed. "So, you're hit. How do we handle that? How can we stop nanobots from freezing our battle armor?"

Sergeant Gordasa waved one hand. "Do you know what this sounds like? To me? It's like an infection. Little bugs that get inside you and screw everything up. You can't stop the bugs from getting inside. So if you can't stop the bugs from getting inside, how do you stop them from doing a lot of damage once they are inside? Some kind of, uh, nano vaccination or nano-anti-venom?"

Vic turned to Stark. "Gordo's right, Ethan. We have to think of these things as sort of like a medical problem. But a vaccination doesn't seem workable, not with the time we've got. I'm not even sure how that could work. Hunter-killer nanobots inside the battle armor? Lamont, you're our best equipment expert."

"And I never heard of anything like that. I mean, you'd have to figure out IFF of some sort for the nanobots so they could identify intruders, nanoscale weapons of some type, a way to get the killer nanos to the infection site. All kinds of stuff. I don't see how we can invent something like that in less than a week, let alone install it in our armor."

"Me, neither. How else do you counter the nano rounds if you're thinking in medical terms?"

Stark turned to his comm pad. "None of us are likely to know that. But maybe I know someone who might have some answers." He punched in a code, waiting until his screen cleared to show the face of the tired-eyed medic. She seemed to be standing somewhere in one of the casualty wards, the shapes of life-support equipment vaguely visible in the background.

"Good afternoon, Sergeant Stark. Private Murphy's been released. He's been pursuing physical therapy on an outpatient basis for a while now."

"Thanks. I knew that. But that's not why I called. I need your medical expertise to help with a question."

"Sure, but I'm no Nobel laureate. What is it?"

"Suppose you got a virus. One with no cure, and it's moving real fast. What do you do?"

Hey eyes widened. "You certainly dream up some cheerful scenarios, Sergeant. I need to know more about this virus. What's the point of entry into the body?"

"Uh, any point. Through the skin."

"I see." For the first time in Stark's acquaintance with her, the medic seemed upset. "Sergeant, if you're researching bioweapons, me and every other medical specialist will be out of here on the next shuttle. That's over the line."

Stark shook his head. "Geez. I'm sorry. That's not what we're doing. No way. This isn't a real virus. It's mechanical. Works against equipment."

"Mechanical? You mean like a computer virus?"

"Sorta."

"A computer virus moves along circuits at the speed of light, Sergeant. You can counter the infection, but not stop it."

"Okay, we're not talking a worm or something like that. This would be, like, nanobots."

"Oh. Like the nanos we use sometimes. Those move through the system a lot slower." Mollified, the medic pondered the question. "Fast moving virus, no cure, entry at any point. There's only one thing you can do, Sergeant. Amputate."

"Amputate?"

"Yup." The medic quirked a humorless smile. "Seal off the infected area before the infection gets to something critical. The only way to do that, using a human analogy, is to amputate the infected limb. Real fast. Of course, if the infection has entered through the head that option's not going to help much."

"I can see that."

"What you really want is antibodies to counter the infection. That beats amputation any day. Even though we can grow limbs back these days, it's not a lot of fun."

"I understand."

"There's also the snake bite approach if the infection is entering somewhere on the abdomen. Cut it out and suck it out. I don't know how practical that'd be here, though."

Stark winced at the matter-of-fact description, then nodded. "Thanks, Doc. I appreciate the information."

"No problem."

Stark looked around the table. "Everybody copy that? Can we amputate part of somebody's battle armor if it gets a hit from a nano round?"

Bev Manley scowled at the table's surface. "They had to scratch plans for auto-amputate devices built into the battle armor at the knees, elbows, hips, and shoulders. No soldier would wear the stuff for fear the auto-amputate gear would malfunction."

"I can understand that." Stark was unable to totally suppress a shudder. "But we're not talking physically removing a limb. That's a nonstarter."