Infinity Squad (31 page)

Himenez stopped the recording after thirty seconds of static, then looked at me. "What made you stop talking, in the middle of your sentence?"

No. NO. He could NOT find out about this. I was not going to spend three straight lifetimes breaking rocks. I shook my head. "Nerves. It was a heavy mission. We were all freaked out."

"Indeed. Your squad members were so upset, that after that single heated exchange, they stayed absolutely silent for the next two minutes and fifteen seconds."

"We were processing."

"An amazing feat of radio discipline, considering the circumstances. In fact, the very next sounds are you reacting to Hector's suicide." Himenez played that, then turned off the recording again. "Interesting how it takes the average human fifteen minutes to recover from being knocked unconscious, as you did in this room after your tazering. Yet Lieutenant Hector, in the same cloned body, recovered enough in less than three minutes to overcome four captors while bound and throw himself out of a moving helicopter?"

"I didn't hit him very hard."

"And how does someone check the number of lights they have on their buffering band with their hands tied behind their back, exactly?"

I started sweating. "He must have seen the reflection off some metal surface as he was lying on the floor."

"I see." Himenez made a note on his pad and considered it for a moment as the sick feeling in my stomach grew. Then he smiled. "Well, luckily for you, Lieutenant Hector has no memory of the incidents inside the helicopter, and Lieutenant Samson corroborates your account of Hector acting strangely inside the caves. And since Lieutenant Hector has resurrected without issue, I'm going to recommend that General Oakley only conduct a cursory inquiry into this incident. You should be free in more than enough time to lead your squad on their next mission."

I exhaled. Himenez walked to the door, then looked back at me expectantly.

"Thank you?" I said.

He gave me a slight nod. "As I said, Lieutenant Forrest, I haven't quite figured you out. Your squad records the most enemy kills while using the least cloned bodies, which is admirable. However, there are many
inconsistencies
in your Squad's actions that I will be looking into over the coming days."

My throat started feeling tight again.

"But I believe you are intelligent, and I will need intelligent officers to move to the next phase of this war."

"Next phase?"

He rapped on the door to summon the guard. "They say generals always fight the last war, and your Oakley is no different. These short, half-day patrols, cycling back and forth to this base to eat and sleep do not take full advantage of the buffering band technology. It is inefficient," he sniffed, as if that was the worst thing imaginable.

"And what's the alternative? Carpet bombing?"

He sniffed again. "That is even more inefficient for the dollar-to-kill ratio. No, imagine your squad being dropped into a sector and killing all the enemy in your path, without stopping to eat or sleep or tend to its wounded. Continuing forward non-stop until your bodies physically dropped dead from exhaustion. And then, new clones being helicoptered to where the patrol died, picking up the weapons from your dead bodies and continuing the battle, without pause. As many times as it takes to kill every spider on this planet." The guard opened the door. "That is the efficient, modern way to conduct a war, and
that
is what I have been sent here to effect." And then he stepped out.

Holy fuck.

As Himenez had predicted, the inquiry was inconclusive, with Zazlu, Butcher, Juan and Jinx all testifying that Hector threw himself out, Samson having to admit Hector was acting somewhat strangely beforehand, and Hector seething with anger at me, but having no real evidence to present. At the bureaucrat’s recommendation, I was reinstated back to command of Infinity Squad with a detailed record of the incident filed in my personnel folder. So was Hector, back to Immortal Squad.

And that was only one of the things I had to worry about right now.

"He's smarter than Hughes and more patient than Oakley," I whispered to Zaz and Butcher the second I got them alone in our barracks. "Himenez is going to be a problem. He's going to start looking into
everything
. We need to clean up our loose ends, now."

"What are we going to do about Hector?" Ann-Marie asked.

"I don't know. He must have been thinking of the slugs and the caves when he died, so the thought or memory or something followed him into his new body."

"I meant, what are we going to do about him thinking you murdered him? He could take you out right here on base, he's so angry."

I shook my head. "I don't know."

"And what are we going to do about Three-Spot?" Zazlu asked. "He's getting weaker and we've lost our link to Red-Stripe. We can't warn them of patrols."

"I don't know. Himenez will be watching us too closely. And you should hear what he has planned for our pa-"

"And what about the brain slugs?" Butcher added. "We can't let them near the base! If there's anything on this planet that needs to be made extinct, it's them."

I was about to yell but then I forced myself to exhale.

Then inhale.

Ridley had been adamant that a leader of a squad, like the captain of a battleship, should never say 'I don't know'. And now I was seeing why.

I held up my hands to calm my Lieutenants down. "What we need," I said, "is a plan."

We gathered Steve and all the privates together and told them to go back to wearing their buffering bands and sidearms at all times, no exceptions. We also told them to never go into those three caves southwest of the valley, no matter what anyone, including Zazlu, Butcher or myself, said after this point. We also told them to never be alone with any member of Immortal Squad, and never to be outnumbered by them in the common areas. And, in a stunning break from the past, we told them why.

We didn't tell them everything, but we told them about the brain slugs and how they hunted, and what it would mean if the slugs got on base or, god forbid, through the wormgate. We also told them about Hector's 'accident', and why the Immortals may want to kill us. And we told them about Himenez.

I sent Steve off to find ways to counter a brain slug infection, or even remove it. I sent Zazlu away with orders to clean up any evidence of his black market customers, suppliers, accomplices, bribers and bribees. I told Ann-Marie to start finding out anything she could about Himenez, covertly, and I told Juan to have Dakota get information out of Himenez, overtly. I had a feeling the bureaucrat would be seeing a lot of Dakota's legs in the near future. And, just on the off chance, just as a back-up, I had Grimstone start making helmets.

Steve and I were hotly debating the merits of salt bombing the caves when there was a knock at our barracks door. I looked up from the ad-hoc war table we had set up to see Doc Murphy being let in. She noticed all the activity, felt the emotion in the air, and was frowning as she came up to me.

"Is everything okay? You guys seem so...worried," she said, looking around.

But that wasn't what I wanted to talk about right now. "Are you wearing make-up?"

"What? No!" she said, blushing and turning away to pull the collar of her lab coat over her bright, glossy red lips. "Maybe I put something on- I don't remember!"

"Doc, you look beautiful. I'm flattered."

"It's not just for you! God! Why do you always make everything so hard-"

I pulled her close as if we were going to kiss right there and whispered into her ear, tenderly. "Doc. Things are a little tense right now. The boys can't handle anything else and you looked like you had bad news. So I made a joke, for the morale of the squad. Just go with it."

Her hands were against my chest, her thigh pressed against mine, and my hand felt so
right
pulling the small of her back to me. Shannon looked up and her breath was hot on my cheek as she spoke. And she wasn't pushing me away.

"Fine. You're just so hard to read sometimes, Lieutenant. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your intenti-" And then her eyes got big.

Now it was my turn to blush. My body was 'reacting' to her presence and she couldn't help but feel it, growing against her leg. "Um, let's go somewhere private, Doc."

"Let's."

I ushered her inside the coat closet to some knowing looks and smirks from the privates. She took a step inside and then had to turn immediately, since the closet barely had enough room for both of us to stand. She was pressed up against me again as I stepped in and closed the door, putting us into near darkness.

"What is this place?"

I gestured at the clothes hanging everywhere, a motion that brushed my fingertips through her silky red hair in the confined space. "We use it to store extra fatigues back from the laundry. And I think we made Juan and that shy Asian girl from Comms play 'Seven Minutes in Heaven' in here once."

"And this is your idea of keeping it professional?"

"We don't have to use all seven minutes, Doc."

Suddenly, Shannon's Murphy's body was pressing against mine in very interesting ways, arms, thighs, and hair going everywhere. But then I realized she was just trying to get something out of her skirt pocket. She slapped a piece of paper against my chest.

"The results from your amygdala testing," she said, breathing a little harder. "Seven seems to be your lucky number. Up to three deaths, there seems to be slight but repairable change in the state of your consciousness. That's all the clinical testing on Earth went to, in non-stressful conditions. But after five stressful deaths it gets worse. And after seven deaths, if the trend holds, is where the irreversible changes happen. You can't come back from there. You're a new person. How many deaths are you up to now, Lieutenant?"

I gulped. God, I couldn't even remember. Maybe the death marks the Immortals wore around their neck weren't a horrible idea.

I felt her hand touch my cheek in the darkness. "Hey, hey," she said. "I didn't mean to scare you. You won't be a bad person, just a mix of your original memories and the clone's. Your cognition should remain the same."

"Should. Thanks. Very comforting, Doc."

Somehow, in the darkness, my hands found her hips again and rested there, just below her thin waist.
That
was comforting, actually.

"Well, it would help if I could get more data,” she said. “But that's not possible now, with the prisoner being shut off, is it?"

"Not really."

"And why would you need a Hell-Spider to test your brain functions?"

I sighed. It was time. "Because they're psychic, Doc. They can read minds and see minds and they can talk between minds just like you and I are talking right now."

She shoved my hands off of her waist. "Lieutenant Forrest, I swear! I hate it when you make me the butt of your stupid jokes instead of just-"

"It's the truth, Doc! That's how I could tell you were thinking we were on a date, that day in front of the spider."

"And I can tell what you're thinking now, Lieutenant!" she scoffed, bumping her hip into my still prominent male reaction. "I don't need to be psychic for that! Let me out of this closet-"

I grabbed her by the shoulders, firmly. "Doc, I'm dead serious. You can't tell anyone about this. We've been talking to the spiders for a month now. We made friends with them. Even a peace treaty. The brass would hang me as a traitor if you tell anyone."

"And very convenient, since I can't confirm this myself now with the prisoner."

"You have to trust me. Please."

I felt the tension in her shoulders change slightly. But enough. "Very well. For now. Now open the door Lieutenant."

I squeezed her slim, strong shoulders. "But it hasn't been seven minutes yet."

"Lieutenant."

"Okay," I laughed. "But you have to promise me you'll do one little thing for me first."

I could almost hear her smirk in the darkness. "And what's that?"

"Talk to our medic Steve about a little thing we call brain slugs."

That evening, Second Chance Squad killed two Hell-Spiders.

The news spread through base and Zazlu and I nervously pretended to eat in the cafeteria waiting for them to be cleaned and brought in.

"Anyone we know?" I whispered as they were hung, trying not to make my attention obvious.

He was frowning over his plate. "Yellow-Sun. And the other I do not recognize. We had eaten with him once."

"From an allied clan?"

"Probably. This patrol was not in the valley, but south, in the grasslands east of the swamp. They were perhaps hunting together."

I sighed. "Red-Stripe will not be happy."

Zazlu gave me a fierce look. "He should not be. We are breaking the peace treaty."