King's County (2 page)

This was what the big speech earlier
was about, the big deployment. It was just something to do. Colonel
Jackson gave another speech like the first one after we'd all
arrived.

They dropped him in the middle of our
circled tents. It was night with no moon. The transport descended
out of the darkness at combat speed, banging the landing gear on
the packed snow. The Colonel and his staff came running out
carrying rifles, ducking just the tiniest little bit like they
might potentially be under fire.

He got a good reception. I'm sure the
speech was a smashing success by his reckoning. And with that, the
maneuvers were over. Tents were packed back up and the plows
cleared out a nice, even space for the bigger air transports. We
loaded everything onto them, trucks and all, and were back at the
division headquarters after only about an hour.

Waiting to lift off from the camp, we
got a glimpse of the actual fighting. A squadron of three
interceptors, I'm not sure whose, screeched around the edge of the
battlefield at top speed, probably going about Mach 4. The sonic
boom reached us at the same time that they hit a plasma mine. The
three interceptors exploded together in a burst of brilliant green
and blue light. The sound of the explosion reached us several
seconds later, rumbling across the tundra as the falling, burning
debris winked out of existence. None of the men talked for awhile
after seeing that.

*

WY 2064

Other than hanging around drinking
beer, passing out in our bunks and our diligent undisciplined and
unsanctioned practicing with the machine guns and grenade
launchers, we did actually fly missions.

Including me there were 7 flight
operators in our detachment. We were all Lieutenants. There were
also a couple of Tech Sgts that kept to themselves. We thought they
were gay and joked about it, but they actually were pretty weird.
They were both Mexican, I think, and just in it for the
citizenship. The CO was a Major who did absolutely nothing at all
except walk around the flight room a couple times a day and pretend
to understand what we were doing. He kept to himself,
too.

We flew most days. Ground attack
fighters were our specialty which we typically used against fixed
installations. The most fun was when attacking an enemy airbase.
Our ugly, blunt nosed GAF’s would fly 5 meters above the ground
toward the base while the dagger-like interceptors dove in from
30,000 meters (the maximum ceiling allowed by treaty).

Truly thrilling, nothing in my life so
far had ever been so satisfying. Despite knowing we were fighting a
most likely pointless, bullshit war, and we were in no danger of
suffering anything worse than a hangover, the missions felt real
and serious, to me at least. Maybe that's what made me the
squadron's top performer.

With no warning, one day we had
visitors at the base. The Major cleaned himself up to introduce
them to us. They weren't Air Force or even Americans. They were
Greeks. The Major described them as specialists and didn't
elaborate further. I got the impression he didn't like
them.

The Greeks, 3 total, brought along a
travel trailer for them to sleep in. They spent most of their time
off in there. They seemed to smoke constantly. As soon as you
walked outside our building, at any time of day, the smell coming
off of that trailer of pungent Greek tobacco would remind you they
were here.

The Major gave them a pathetically
small room to do their work in. With their racks of computers and
cables and stuff, they could barely move around. A hundred times a
day you'd see one of the Greeks remove himself from that mess,
drenched in sweat, to go have a smoke outside.

They wouldn't speak much when we were
in earshot. You'd typically just hear them muttering in Greek under
their breath, usually swearing, pissed about something. I don't
think any of them were mad at us. They were just sort of angry by
default. And they did seem to be doing real work in
there.

We weren't supposed to know what they
were doing and nobody in the squadron cared. The secrecy was not
unusual. We were too busy and too important in our own minds to be
bothered, anyway. I did notice that the computers they worked on
were painstakingly hand wired directly into a port on our combat
mainframe. They didn't trust, didn't want to risk a wireless
connection.

&

"You guys, I like you guys. You don't
take any shit, right?"

By mutual agreement, the war was put on
pause for 36 hours. We were hanging out in the rec room trying to
make an inroad into the wall of beer. The Greeks had paused their
work, too.

"Yeah..." What do you say to that? I
changed the subject,

"So what's up with you guys? What are
you doing here?"

"Ah." He waggled a brown stained finger
at me. "Don't worry about it, ah?"

"Alright, you know what? Fuck it. Just
go ahead and smoke, guys,"

Lt Ramsey told the Greeks. They didn't
have to go outside anymore. Ramsey lit a cigarette of his
own.

The party wore on, slower than normal,
but our steady drinking paid off. Soon we were all best
friends.

One of the Greeks disappeared for a
minute, coming back with a bottle of Ouzo. The three of them made a
big deal about us having some so I helped pour shots into the
glasses and cups laying around and we all took one
together.

They insisted we have another. This
round required a toast with the three of them shouting over each
other. I didn't understand it.

That was it for the Ouzo. I think they
were pissed that it went so quickly but they always seemed pissed.
They should have brought more.

The good feelings didn't last long
after the toast. The Greeks got upset with each other, taking the
party unstoppably downhill. They argued like maniacs in their
language - fuck, fuck, fuck - that's the only word I understood. We
just watched and tried not to laugh too hard but they knew we were
laughing at them and that made them angrier.

One of the Greeks took his belt off and
shook it in the other's faces. I've never seen anything like it.
The three of them really started raging, facing each other,
alternating their energy back and forth, each one equally furious
at the other two. Then, maybe seeing no point in further argument,
they went outside and beat the living shit out of each
other.

That was our first and last night
hanging out with them. After the fight, the Greeks were bloodied up
pretty good. They all wore rings and there had been a few solid
buckle hits, too. But they went back to their travel trailer
peacefully and together. The squadron thought it all a good show
and went back inside to keep drinking.

Waking up the next day and walking to
the rec room, I saw the Greek's trailer was gone. When I asked the
Major, he said didn't know anything about it.

*

AK 2092

On the flight back from maneuvers, as
one of the first ten to arrive at the assembly zone, our squad was
rewarded with a night off. At the announcement over the radio, the
men all hooted in unison and barked out the division battle
cries.

"Hey, El-Tee! Not too bad, huh?" One of
the sergeants whacked me on the back. I didn't like it.

"Sorry, sir." He said adding, "...thank
you."

I started to feel like kind of a
dick.

"Got any big plans for the break,
soldier?"

"Oh, yeah. Well, probably hit the game
room with the guys. You know."

"What’s your first name,
Sgt?"

"Geake!" That's how he spelled it, not
Jake.

"Geake, I have to tell you, that sounds
fucking horrible. When you get finished doing whatever it is you
have to do before you start having all that fun I want you to come
by my quarters. OK?"

"OK...what?" Geake was having some
trouble with the idea.

"Just come by my quarters, my room,
later on tonight - not too late. That's an order." I smiled so he'd
know I meant well, but not too big of a smile. I didn't want him to
get the wrong idea.

*

WY 2065

The old routine came back easily to the
squadron after the Greeks had left. The war resumed as normal. We
flew our raids together, did solo search and destroy missions, and
every few weeks or so we did a mass attack with sometimes dozens of
other squadrons on an enemy strong point. It wasn't too bad, better
than college.

On a cool October morning while
wrapping up a flight, I got a tap on the shoulder. This was
unusual. Nobody would mess with a pilot while he's strapped in to
the equipment with a craft in the air. I turned around to see Major
standing there, looking oddly happy. It was unsettling to see him
like this. Off to his office we went.

"Lt. Waller." That unpleasant smile
came out again. "You've flown 189 missions with our detachment.
Does that sound about right?"

"I suppose. I haven't kept
track."

"You don't check your statistics?" He
frowned and looked down at his tablet screen. Pilots all pretended
to not give a shit about the statistics. "I find that highly
unusual, Lt. Waller."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, other people have kept track.
Did you know that in those 189 missions you have not lost a single
drone GAF?"

I did know. It was a point of pride
with me. I think we all kept at least a loose mental record of our
statistics and, to be honest, I did peek at the official stats more
than once.

"We’re a little late...unfortunately.
At achieving 175 clean flights, pilots are now being selected for
special consideration - special training. Congratulations,
Lt."

This is how I wound up going to
space.

*

AK 2092

We sat around a thickly chromed bar
built into the side of the cliff-like wall. The club was circular
and deeply set into the earth. The part above ground was mostly
buried in snow. The ceiling was rounded, dark, sparsely lit with
thousands of brilliant pinprick white lights, and it came to a
point at the top like an onion. The place was incredibly vast. At
the farthest point across, through a considerable haze of smoke,
the people looked like tiny spastic wax figures. When the smoke in
the air got too thick, from far below, a burp of clean air rushed
upward and flushed the smoke out of a little aperture at the onion
tip.

The music was of an ambient sort,
seemingly typical nightclub garbage, but actually densely complex.
The closer you'd listen, the more layers of detail you'd hear.
Sitting around talking and drinking, I could only hear the
throbbing bass and synth beat. After Geake went to the head,
without the distraction, I heard women singing, drums and guitars
then, even deeper, a swirling, ecstatic orchestra.

We weren't supposed to be here. It's
not that the Army explicitly forbid it. There was no code that said
soldiers on leave couldn't go to nightclubs in wild frontier boom
towns. Just that virtually anything we might do there was, you
might say, frowned upon. We were free to drink, take drugs, whore
around, or whatever - but it was considered bad form, at best
inappropriate, and so few did.

I picked up on this quickly. I wasn't a
stupid kid anymore. It was a narrow road the Army was walking to
hold everything together. They had no real mission. This could
never be made obvious. There had to be strict control of the men.
As there were no natural incentives for serving, no real enemy,
Army policy had to provide for a balance of comfort and belonging
along with a subtle underlying fearfulness of nonconformity. And
they always offered something, sometime in the future, for those
who played along to look forward to. And if you didn't fit in, you
had to go. They didn’t mess around with that. I knew I wouldn't
last long.

Our bartender’s hair was in a long
rope-like braid over her left shoulder. When she leaned in to give
us our drinks the braid came alive. A snake’s head emerged from the
end and hissed and snapped at us.

"Ha!" She clearly had done this before
and enjoyed it. "Don't worry, he’s harmless. Really freaks out the
day trippers. You guys military?"

"How'd you know - Listen, the kid here
wants to get laid. Are we in the right spot for that?"

"Wait, El-Tee, I didn't come here for
that."

"Geake, what's the matter? I know
you're not...whatever."

Truth be told, I wasn't surprised he'd
balk at getting a girl but that was the main reason I'd brought him
here. I wouldn't give up easily.

We’d hitched a ride on a military
supply craft. Ruth was a mining town, the mining town for North
America is what the obnoxious warrant officer sitting next to us
called it. We ditched him at the hotel when he went into the
bathroom and hopped into a cab. The cab was self driving, the guy
up front was more of a manager or concierge and he told us about
this place.

"Lt. Waller, I have a girl back home.
We all do, all the men in the Territorial." Geake said.

I had heard this before but didn't
really believe it. I certainly didn't have a girl back
home.