Tropic of Creation (18 page)

S
ascha lay on her cot, pretending to sleep. Every light in camp was on, though it was the middle of the night. Her parents sat on folding chairs, each armed. She knew her mother had never shot a pistol such as now lay across her lap. She gripped it as though she might just as easily beat to death as shoot anything that came through the tent flap.

Through the drone of her parents’ whispered voices, Sascha could hear occasional gunfire at the perimeter. The enlisteds shot at anything that moved. Sometimes a staccato burst would shred the rain-filled night; at other times, a short volley of shots. Each time, Sascha hoped for one more fallen enemy—though the enemy, of course, was without end.

In the morning, Charlie Company was leaving on foot, hiking the six miles to the
Lucia
. They had given up on Baker Camp. They’d leave Badri Nazim behind, alive or dead. Sascha turned over so many times on her cot that the blanket was wrapped around her like a cocoon.

She felt the cot sag on one side. Her father put a hand on her shoulder.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked. His eyes were sunken into dark cavities. Behind him, Cristin watched the tent flap, sitting tall, perfect posture even in the cheap folding chair.

“Nazim,” Sascha said. “She’s still out there.”

Geoff looked at the tent wall, in the direction of the sporadic gunfire. “Nazim survived the Great War, remember.”

Sascha thought of Nazim’s hair, altered forever, but still growing. “I don’t give up on her.”

Rain pelted the tent, filling in the spaces when conversation faltered.

Nearby, a shot fired. Cristin rose from her chair, then sat again when quiet returned.

Sascha noticed that her father was holding something in his lap. He placed it next to her pillow. “This is something I had made for you,” he said.

“Why don’t you just give her the pistol?” Cristin mumbled, her back to them, still keeping watch.

Geoff’s mouth flattened, ignoring her. “You’ve never fired a gun, Sascha. But you’ve used a flashlight.” He patted the cylinder lying between them. “This is a modified light spectrum lamp. The techs put it together for me.”

Sascha pushed herself up on one elbow to look closer at the thing. It was dull gray, with the look of nano-housing. A bulb on the front protruded from a neck, a design that would allow light to flood in all directions.

“When we set out in a few hours, I want you to carry this. You can put your arms through the straps so that it rides on your chest.” He handed it to her.

“But it won’t be dark when we leave,” she said, fingering the lamp. She sat up, facing her father. She was dressed, as they all were, to move out in a moment’s notice. Cristin had insisted she sleep with her boots on. They were army-issue, lug-soled web boots. They weren’t officer-caliber
such as her father and mother now wore in anticipation of their march, but basic enlisted boots, the smallest in camp. Sascha felt proud to wear a private’s boots, like Nazim’s—Infantry, not Transport boots, she noted. Infantry always got the best boots.

“But it
is
dark,” Geoff said. “The clouds and rain make it darker than when we arrived, darker than the dry season.”

He turned the lamp on. The tent burst into light, probing all niches, creating a great shadow of her mother against the tent flap. He showed her the switch, and she turned the light off.

“The fauna don’t like bright light. I think they’re adapted to a wet season existence, going dormant in the dry season.” He was speaking in a low, middle-of-the-night voice, calming and matter-of-fact. It almost seemed like a normal time, except for the gunfire.

“The enlisteds found the animals don’t like bright light, especially directly in the eyes—but what we’ve got here may even be better.” He tapped on the lamp housing. “This light matches the spectrum of light from the primary sun. I’m thinking that the wet season happens in several years’ long cycles, tied to the approach of the dwarf star. So we skewed the spectrum away from the dwarf toward the primary sun’s wavelengths, to give the locals a nice headache.”

Put them off their feed
, came to Sascha’s mind, and she wished it hadn’t.

In the pause, Cristin’s sigh was unmistakable. Under her breath she said: “Good Lord, a
flashlight.”

“Why don’t we try that for the camp’s lights, then?” Sascha wanted to know.

“There isn’t time to reengineer things now. But it’s why we’ve kept the lights on every night.”

Cristin twisted around in her chair to look at them. “Geoffrey, just give her the gun. She’s old enough to shoot a gun.”

Geoff swallowed, but shook his head. “We’re starting to shoot
each other
with the damn things. We’re not going to win with force.” He held his wife’s gaze.

“I’m glad we didn’t take that tack with the ahtra,” she said, staring back.

“These creatures aren’t the enemy, Cristin. They’re animals, exploiting their food resources. If we think in those terms, then—”

Cristin interrupted. “The food resources are
us
, have you noticed? We don’t need to study them when killing will do.” She looked at her daughter, and doubtless saw for the thousandth time that Sascha would follow her father, always her father. Cristin turned back to watch the door.

Her father patted her arm and returned to his vigil by Cristin’s side, their voices again mixing with the rain patter. Finally Sascha fell asleep, clutching the lamp.

She dreamed of the two suns, the red one in an elliptical orbit around the other. She watched from her balcony as the dwarf sun grew larger, bringing summer, and heat, and chaos. Below her, in the city, people frantically danced and made love. A few hailed her, calling her to do the same before it was too late. She retreated from the balcony and their voices.…

A hand was on her elbow, pulling her. She woke in an instant. A soldier was standing in the tent door, wind and rain beating in around him. Her father was urging her to her feet. “Hurry” was all he said.

With Cristin, they rushed from the tent into the night. Gunfire spattered around them, along with the
thunk, thunk
sound of the dominos.

“Roche’s tent,” her father said, grasping her by the upper arm.

They ran toward the center of camp. Amid shouts and gunfire, soldiers dashed to their posts.

For an instant Sascha saw a shape. Three feet high,
much larger than anything they’d seen before, with an odd, strutting motion. It disappeared between the tents. Shouts came from the perimeter, along with the zinging noise of the bots as they hurled hot plasma. The smell of cooked flesh drifted among the tent corridors, mixing with the smells of mud—a thick paste that sucked at their feet as they ran.

In the next tent aisle, Sascha saw more of the creatures, running in a pack, jabbering what sounded like words as they ran.
Real words
. Narrow heads bobbed up and down, heading away down the aisle, babbling in a high-pitched litany:
Fire! Here! Run!
A domino clattered only twenty feet away and a soldier screamed, dreadfully cut off. Cristin had latched on to Sascha’s other arm, her eyes wild.

Sprinting toward the command tent, the three of them joined Lieutenant Roche and Sergeant Juric, who were crouching on one side of it. Sascha’s knees sank deep into the mud as her father shielded her against the tent with his body.

“Wait here,” Roche barked at her father, as though they would even venture into the melee.

Ben Juric’s face fell into sudden blackness as a near section of camp lights failed. “Split us up, Lieutenant. Last chance, I’m thinking.”

“No. We’ll pull back to a smaller perimeter.”

“No perimeters! Christ almighty. Give me five men and I’ll get through, with or without a bot.”

“I said, no one leaves.”

Juric spit to one side. “Don’t get it, do you? We’re a restaurant, sitting here. Those stalkers are
attracted
to us all together. Send us out in units of five or six.” A wave of gunfire came nearer. “Last chance,” he snarled. “Or you think you’re still fighting the”—here he swiveled and sent a volley of shots down the aisle to fell a creature running full speed toward them—“goddamned battle of Mi Pann?”

Cristin was holding Sascha’s arm in a tight grip, her other hand pointing her pistol out toward the rain and the night.

The tent collapsed. Behind it were two upright creatures with gray beaks and long legs, covered with fur that now glistened in the streaming wet. In the next instant they ducked forward, heads bobbing down, legs flinging up to tear at the group. Roche was caught in the throat. Cristin was pulling Sascha down, but not to safety, only down because she was shot, the side of her head erupting in fragments, and Sascha stumbled backward, losing her mother’s grip. In shock, Sascha stared at her mother. Then Geoff was running forward to where Cristin lay, just as a creature turned toward him and brought its long leg up in the air and then down, slashing, letting loose a spray of blood. Sascha heard herself screaming, standing in the rain, screaming.

A bot was jostling beside her. A sharp twang next to her ear, and when she looked again, the attackers were dead, their flesh smoking and sizzling in the rain. Beside them, three human bodies, Roche and …

Juric yanked her to her feet and began loping across the compound, but she ripped her arm from him. “My father!” she cried.

“Too late,” he growled. He dragged her along as she fought him, digging in her toes.

“Medic,” she said, “medic …”

“No medic for them, gal. They’re gone. Now you save yourself.” He hauled her to a barricade, where twenty soldiers had piled planks and equipment.

“We have to go back!” Sascha cried. “My grandfather will say you have to go back.…”

Juric pushed her onto the ground and crouched next to her, his face a couple of inches from hers. His regen eye looked like the dominant of the two, the tough member of
the pair that could look at anything. “Don’t be bringing up the big general, gal. Nobody cares about generals right now. Lie down flat and shut up.”

Lieutenant Anning was in charge, trying to organize a defense, but everyone was shouting at once. The lights were all gone except for one spotlight that loyally held on. The stalkers and soldiers mingled in battle all around, with Anning shouting to hold fire, and no one listening, only firing in long, pointless bursts. Shaking, Sascha heard herself moan, “Medic, we need a medic.…”

“Fucking hell,” someone in the bunker cried out. “What in the hell?” The enlisted, a female private, crouched below the barricade, saying, “I saw him. Perez! Don’t shoot, I saw him!”

“Perez is dead,” somebody muttered.

“No, I saw him.” She licked her lips, eyes darting to the others. “But,” her voice cracked, “but not exactly …”

A burly corporal with his regen paw clutching his rifle said, “Not exactly what, private?”

She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again.

Perez was a name Sascha knew. Perez was the enlisted stuck on the other side of Nazim’s black river, back when her life still held together in all its parts instead of, as now, scattered and bleeding in pieces.

“Perez is as dead as asshole Roche,” somebody else said. “Asshole waited until we were surrounded, then he wants to take a stand.”

“Jesus,” somebody was muttering. “They talk, the things
talk.”

“Sergeant,” a private said, eyes glazed, “how can they talk?”

Ignoring him, Sergeant Juric was arguing with Lieutenant Anning.

“Put ‘em on automatic,” Juric was saying.

“We lose their versatility. No.”

They were talking about the bots. Both were in the bunker. One was clinging to the top of the barricade, aiming needles of fire into the rain.

“What happens if you go down, Anning? Nobody else’s got the bot commands. On automatic, they can still fight after those birds pick you apart.”

“We’ll lose fifty percent of the capability,” Anning said. “I’m saying no, Sergeant.”

Then Juric’s pistol was against Anning’s forehead. “Yeah, and I’m saying yes. Do it.”

Anning’s eyes were blank as he sized Juric up. “You’re finished, Sergeant. I’ll run you out of the corp.”

“So demote me. Now switch the dogs over.”

A twitch took over Anning’s face. “You patches are my witnesses,” he snorted. “You remember this.” He turned, calling the bots to his side, alarming, silver-black beetles. Sascha was eye to eye with them, wondering if they would kill her if she moved. Their bodies had morphed into walking guns. The footpads of the nearest one looked strangely amphibian. Its splayed toes left star-shaped prints in the mud.

Sascha heard Juric cock his gun, saying, “Make any mistakes, I’ll kill you good.”

From her viewpoint on the ground, Sascha watched as Anning coded the bots, one at a time, reciting the string of commands that identified his authority to program them, and releasing them from their previous orders, placing them on general battle and defense for whatever unit of soldiers they could find. From now on, the bots used their own AI judgment.

The sergeant took Sascha by the upper arm and pulled her to her feet. Now, in a lull in the fighting, the soldiers sharing the barricade watched him with both hope and terror.

Juric nodded at them. “We split up now. Leave here in
four groups. Buddy up as you want. Whoever gets through, wait one day on board. Then get the hell out of here, and never look back.”

The soldiers looked from Sergeant Juric to Lieutenant Anning and back again.

“Ignore that order,” Anning said. “We’re staying.”

Sascha hoped they would stay. They couldn’t just leave her parents in the mud, but she knew Sergeant Juric cared nothing for that. He had her arm in an iron grip.

He turned to the enlisteds. “If you stay here, guess who’s coming for dinner?”

One of the men nodded. “I’m in with you, Sergeant.” Others muttered their agreement.

Still aiming the gun at Anning, Juric growled at the unit, “You assholes need a fancy invitation? Move.”

In another moment everyone was running pell-mell out into the murky dawn, and Sascha was running with them, remembering at the last moment to turn on the lamp, where it hung on her chest like a flame.