Starship Troopers (3 page)

It was getting light enough to see; I flipped the snoopers up onto my forehead and made a fast scan with bare eyes, looking for anything behind us worth shooting at, anything at all; I had no time to be choosy.

There was something on the horizon in the direction of their spaceport administration & control, maybe, or possibly even a starship. Almost in line and about half as far away was an enormous structure which I couldn’t identify even that loosely. The range to the spaceport was extreme but I let the rocket see it, said, “Go find it, baby!” and twisted its tail—slapped the last one in, sent it toward the nearer target, and jumped.

That building took a direct hit just as I left it. Either a skinny had judged (correctly) that it was worth one of their buildings to try for one of us, or one of my own mates was getting mighty careless with fireworks. Either way, I didn’t want to jump from that spot, even a skimmer; I decided to go through the next couple of buildings instead of over. So I grabbed the heavy flamer off my back as I hit and dipped the snoopers down over my eyes, tackled a wall in front of me with a knife beam at full power. A section of wall fell away and I charged in. And backed out even faster.

I didn’t know what it was I had cracked open. A congregation in church a skinny flophouse—maybe even their defense headquarters. All I knew was that it was a very big room filled with more skinnies than I wanted to see in my whole life.

Probably not a church, for somebody took a shot at me as I popped back out just a slug that bounced off my armor, made my ears ring, and staggered me without hurting me. But it reminded me that I wasn’t supposed to leave without giving them a souvenir of my visit. I grabbed the first thing on my belt and lobbed it in—and heard it start to squawk. As they keep telling you in Basic, doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later.

By sheer chance I had done the right thing. This was a special bomb, one each issued to us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): “I’m a thirty-second bomb! I’m a thirty-second bomb! Twenty-nine! . . . twenty-eight! . . . twenty-seven! -- “

It was supposed to frazzle their nerves. Maybe it did; it certainly frazzled mine. Kinder to shoot a man. I didn’t wait for the countdown; I jumped, while I wondered whether they would find enough doors and windows to swarm out in time.

I got a bearing on Red’s blinker at the top of the jump and one on Ace as I grounded. I was falling behind again—time to hurry.

But three minutes later we had closed the gap; I had Red on my left flank a half mile away. He reported it to Jelly. We heard Jelly’s relaxed growl to the entire platoon: “Circle is closed, but the beacon is not down yet. Move forward slowly and mill around, make a little more trouble—but mind the lad on each side of you; don’t make trouble for him. Good job, so far—don’t spoil it. Platoon! By sections . . . Muster!”

It looked like a good job to me, too; much of the city was burning and, although it was almost full light now, it was hard to tell whether bare eyes were better than snoopers, the smoke was so thick.

Johnson, our section leader, sounded off: “Second section, call off!”

I echoed, “Squads four, five, and six -- call off and report!” The assortment of safe circuits we had available in the new model comm units certainly speeded things up; Jelly could talk to anybody or to his section leaders; a section leader could call his whole section, or his non-coms; and the platoon could muster twice as fast, when seconds matter. I listened to the fourth squad call off while I inventoried my remaining firepower and lobbed one bomb toward a skinny who poked his head around a corner. He left and so did I—“Mill around,” the boss man had said.

The fourth squad bumbled the call off until the squad leader remembered to fill in with Jenkins’ number; the fifth squad clicked off like an abacus and I began to feel good . . . when the call off stopped after number four in Ace’s squad. I called out, “Ace, where’s Dizzy?”

“Shut up,” he said. “Number six! Call off!”

“Six!” Smith answered.

“Seven !”

“Sixth squad, Flores missing,” Ace completed it. “Squad leader out for pickup.”

“One man absent,” I reported to Johnson. “Flores, squad six.”

“Missing or dead?”

“I don’t know. Squad leader and assistant section leader dropping out for pickup.”

“Johnnie, you let Ace take it.”

But I didn’t hear him, so I didn’t answer. I heard him report to Jelly and I heard Jelly cuss. Now look, I wasn’t bucking for a medal—it’s the assistant section leader’s business to make pickup; he’s the chaser, the last man in, expendable. The squad leaders have other work to do. As you’ve no doubt gathered by now the assistant section leader isn’t necessary as long as the section leader is alive.

Right that moment I was feeling unusually expendable, almost expended, because I was hearing the sweetest sound in the universe, the beacon the retrieval boat would land on, sounding our recall. The beacon is a robot rocket, fired ahead of the retrieval boat, just a spike that buries itself in the ground and starts broadcasting that welcome, welcome music. The retrieval boat homes in on it automatically three minutes later and you had better be on hand, because the bus can’t wait and there won’t be another one along.

But you don’t walk away on another cap trooper, not while there’s a chance he’s still alive—not in Rasczak’s Roughnecks. Not in any outfit of the Mobile Infantry. You try to make pickup.

I heard Jelly order: “Heads up, lads! Close to retrieval circle and interdict! On the bounce!”

And I heard the beacon’s sweet voice: “—to the everlasting glory of the infantry, shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young!” and I wanted to head for it so bad I could taste it.

Instead I was headed the other way, closing on Ace’s beacon and expending what I had left of bombs and fire pills and anything else that would weigh me down. “Ace! You got his beacon?”

“Yes. Go back, Useless!”

“I’ve got you by eye now. Where is he?”

“Right ahead of me, maybe quarter mile. Scram! He’s my man .”

I didn’t answer; I simply cut left oblique to reach Ace about where he said Dizzy was.

And found Ace standing over him, a couple of skinnies flamed down and more running away. I lit beside him. “Let’s get him out of his armor—the boat’ll be down any second!”

“He’s too bad hurt!”

I looked and saw that it was true -- there was actually a hole in his armor and blood coming out. And I was stumped. To make a wounded pickup you get him out of his armor . . . then you simply pick him up in your arms— no trouble in a powered suit—and bounce away from there. A bare man weighs less than the ammo and stuff you’ve expended. “What’ll we do?”

“We carry him,” Ace said grimly. “Grab ahold the left side of his belt.” He grabbed the right side, we manhandled Flores to his feet. “Lock on! Now . . . by the numbers, stand by to jump—one—two!”

We jumped. Not far, not well. One man alone couldn’t have gotten him off the ground; an armored suit is too heavy. But split it between two men and it can be done.

We jumped—and we jumped—and again, and again, with Ace calling it and both of us steadying and catching Dizzy on each grounding. His gyros seemed to be out.

We heard the beacon cut off as the retrieval boat landed on it—I saw it land . . . and it was too far away. We heard the acting platoon sergeant call out: “In succession, prepare to embark!”

And Jelly called out, “Belay that order!”

We broke at last into the open and saw the boat standing on its tail, heard the ululation of its take-off warning—saw the platoon still on the ground around it, in interdiction circle, crouching behind the shield they had formed.

Heard Jelly shout, “In succession, man the boat—move!”

And we were still too far away! I could see them peel off from the first squad, swarm into the boat as the interdiction circle tightened.

And a single figure broke out of the circle, came toward us at a speed possible only to a command suit.

Jelly caught us while we were in the air, grabbed Flores by his Y-rack and helped us lift.

Three jumps got us to the boat. Everybody else was inside but the door was still open. We got him in and closed it while the boat pilot screamed that we had made her miss rendezvous and now we had all bought it! Jelly paid no attention to her; we laid Flores down and lay down beside him. As the blast hit us Jelly was saying to himself, “All present, Lieutenant. Three men hurt—but all present!”

I’ll say this for Captain Deladrier: they don’t make any better pilots. A rendezvous, boat to ship in orbit, is precisely calculated. I don’t know how, but it is, and you don’t change it. You can’t.

Only she did. She saw in her scope that the boat had failed to blast on time; she braked back, picked up speed again—and matched and took us in, just by eye and touch, no time to compute it. If the Almighty ever needs an assistant to keep the stars in their courses, I know where he can look.

Flores died on the way up.

CHAPTER 2

It scared me so, I hooked it off,

Nor stopped as I remember,

Nor turned about till I got home,

Locked up in mother’s chamber.

Yankee Doodle, keep it up,

Yankee Doodle dandy,

Mind the music and the step,

And with the girls be handy.

I never really intended to join up.

And certainly not the infantry! Why, I would rather have taken ten lashes in the public square and have my father tell me that I was a disgrace to a proud name.

Oh, I had mentioned to my father, late in my senior year in high school, that I was thinking over the idea of volunteering for Federal Service. I suppose every kid does, when his eighteenth birthday heaves into sight -- and mine was due the week I graduated. Of course most of them just think about it, toy with the idea a little, then go do something else -- go to college, or get a job, or something. I suppose it would have been that way with me . . . if my best chum had not, with dead seriousness, planned to join up.

Carl and I had done everything together in high school -- eyed the girls together, double-dated together, been on the debate team together, pushed electrons together in his home lab. I wasn’t much on electronic theory myself, but I’m a neat hand with a soldering gun; Carl supplied the skull sweat and I carried out his instructions. It was fun; anything we did together was fun. Carl’s folks didn’t have anything like the money that my father had, but it didn’t matter between us. When my father bought me a Rolls copter for my fourteenth birthday, it was Carl’s as much as it was mine; contrariwise, his basement lab was mine.

So when Carl told me that he was not going straight on with school, but serve a term first, it gave me to pause. He really meant it; he seemed to think that it was natural and right and obvious.

So I told him I was joining up, too.

He gave me an odd look. “Your old man won’t let you.”

“Huh? How can he stop me?” And of course he couldn’t, not legally. It’s

the first completely free choice anybody gets (and maybe his last); when a boy, or a girl, reaches his or her eighteenth birthday, he or she can volunteer and nobody else has any say in the matter.

“You’ll find out.” Carl changed the subject.

So I took it up with my father, tentatively, edging into it sideways.

He put down his newspaper and cigar and stared at me. “Son, are you out of your mind?”

I muttered that I didn’t think so.

“Well, it certainly sounds like it.” He sighed. “Still . . . I should have been expecting it; it’s a predictable stage in a boy’s growing up. I remember when you learned to walk and weren’t a baby any longer—frankly you were a little hellion for quite a while. You broke one of your mother’s Ming vases -- on purpose, I’m quite sure . . . but you were too young to know that it was valuable, so all you got was having your hand spatted. I recall the day you swiped one of my cigars, and how sick it made you. Your mother and I carefully avoided noticing that you couldn’t eat dinner that night and I’ve never mentioned it to you until now -- boys have to try such things and discover for themselves that men’s vices are not for them. We watched when you turned the corner on adolescence and started noticing that girls were different—and wonderful.”

He sighed again. “All normal stages. And the last one, right at the end of adolescence, is when a boy decides to join up and wear a pretty uniform. Or decides that he is in love, love such as no man ever experienced before, and that he just has to get married right away. Or both.” He smiled grimly. “With me it was both. But I got over each of them in time not to make a fool of myself and ruin my life.”

“But, Father, I wouldn’t ruin my life. Just a term of service—not career.”

“Let’s table that, shall we? Listen, and let me tell you what you are going to do—because you want to. In the first place this family has stayed out of politics and cultivated its own garden for over a hundred years—I see no reason for you to break that fine record. I suppose it’s the influence of that fellow at your high school—what’s his name? You know the one I mean.”

He meant our instructor in History and Moral Philosophy—a veteran, naturally. “Mr. Dubois.”

“Hmmph, a silly name—it suits him. Foreigner, no doubt. It ought to be against the law to use the schools as undercover recruiting stations. I think I’m going to write a pretty sharp letter about it—a taxpayer has some rights!”

“But, Father, he doesn’t do that at all! He—“ I stopped, not knowing how to describe it. Mr. Dubois had a snotty, superior manner; he acted as if none of us was really good enough to volunteer for service. I didn’t like him. “Uh, if anything, he discourages it.”

“Hmmph! Do you know how to lead a pig? Never mind. When you graduate, you’re going to study business at Harvard; you know that. After that, you will go on to the Sorbonne and you’ll travel a bit along with it, meet some of our distributors, find out how business is done elsewhere. Then you’ll come home and go to work. You’ll start with the usual menial job, stock clerk or something, just for form’s sake—but you’ll be an executive before you can catch your breath, because I’m not getting any younger and the quicker you can pick up the load, the better. As soon as you’re able and willing, you’ll be boss. There! How does that strike you as a program? As compared with wasting two years of your life?”