"You did the right thing. You saved a lot of lives."
"Sure." One fingertip traced its way across the medal ribbon. "Ethan, sometimes doing the right thing doesn't do a damn thing for your conscience."
"So why do you wear that damn ribbon?"
Her gaze speared him. "To remind myself that hard decisions carry a price, and knowing what's right isn't always easy, and that people pay with their lives when we do the wrong thing and sometimes even when we do the right thing." Vic's index finger leveled at Stark's chest like a pistol barrel. "And from now on I want it to remind you of the same damn things, Ethan Stark."
"Why do you think I need that?" Stark asked quietly.
"Because you've got a major demon inside and you're too damn devoted to duty and to your fellow soldiers and someday that's all going to come to a head and when that happens, Ethan Stark, you damn well better be sure you're ready to live with whatever you do or don't do."
"I will be," Stark vowed. "Why now? Why tell me all this? You think something big's coming?"
"I don't know," Vic whispered. "There're rumors, and rumors of rumors. Nothing definite, just that the corporations are tired of the stalemate because they want to grab more real estate up here, and the politicians are playing the 'Why can't you win?' game against each other in the elections, and our senior officers are worried sombody's finally going to ask why they can't do the jobs they claim to be best at. Does it mean anything? I don't know. If it does, there'll be major hell to pay."
Stark shook his head, confused and angry now. "I don't want to think about it anymore."
"You don't? What, is your demon drunk, too?"
"Not yet, but it will be." They split another six, the green-painted walls beginning to take on a nauseous tint as their vision blurred. "I think I've had enough," Stark finally announced, speaking with great care. He tried to stand, then let the Moon's gravity slowly haul him back into his seat. "Now I know I've had enough."
"Need a hand?" Vic offered, weaving upright, her own expression suddenly alarmed. "Oh, hell. I'll let you lean on me if I can lean on you."
"Deal." They headed for their cubes, temporary lodging fortunately not too far away, hanging on to each other for support as they moved down the faded green corridors in a cautious stagger made ridiculous by low gravity. Finally arriving at the entry to Stark's cube, he reached to hit the access pad, the panel whisking open in swift obedience. "Thanks for the comp'ny, Vic." He turned, looked straight into her eyes, and stopped moving, suddenly aware of her body, of her breast pressed close to his side and his hand resting firmly just above her hip. Vic gazed somberly back, the same awareness there. Stark took a quick breath, startled by the unexpected excitement, then hesitated unaccountably, just looking at her, his hands unmoving.
Vic spoke first. "You're a good friend, Ethan."
A moment's thought, good sense somehow surfacing through the alcohol haze in his mind. "Yeah, Vic, you, too. Too good a friend . . ."
"To risk ruining it?" she finished for him.
"Yeah," he agreed again. "Don't know what'd happen, but I know what we've got. Need you as my pal, Vic, that's what counts most." He paused, thoughts running sluggishly over their earlier conversation. "Government don't care, corporations sure as hell don't care, civs don't care, officers don't care, but grunts . . . we look out for each other. That's what keeps us going, isn't it?"
"Smart kid." Vic smiled fondly at him. "Yeah, we've got that, no matter what else they take."
They released each other, staggering at the attempt to balance independently. She had just started to turn away when Stark's hormones roused enough to kick his brain partially into action as caution took a momentary backseat. "But I bet you'd have been one hell of a partner in the sack."
She turned back, smiling languorously. "Damn right, Ethan. Best you'd have ever had. Dream about it." Her arm abruptly shoved him inside as she headed down the hall toward her own cube.
"Bitch!" he yelled, not meaning it, hearing her laughter float back down the hall.
Damn, I'm lucky she's in my unit. Kept me alive more than once. Maybe I'll return the favor. Someday.
Stark made a half motion to undress before saying to hell with it and falling in a slow-motion lunar sprawl onto his bunk to let sleep carry away the night's confusions.
Lieutenant Conroy cleared her throat, inadvertently emphasizing her youth to her three Sergeants linked in for the mission brief. "Second Platoon, Bravo Company has been selected to carry out a raid tonight on enemy forces occupying Sector Cowpens."
She sounds as if she thinks this is an honor.
It hadn't been that long a wait for word, early afternoon of the artificial day humanity imposed on lunar life, just long enough for the enemy to find out about the ratings and get primed for action.
Typical,
Stark thought sourly.
Hope Kilroy survives enough of these 'honors' to get a clue.
Conroy began stepping through the brief point by point, as if she were reading off the briefing appendix from the
Platoon Leader's Handbook. Probably got a copy scrolling on her vid.
From her segment of the screen, Reynolds passed a meaningful look his way: She's new, Ethan, and at least she's trying, so give her a break.
Damn, sometimes seems Vic can read my mind.
Stark focused on the map vid as Conroy got to the meat of the mission. "Objective is the metals refinery centered at grid 44.10 151.72. We're to take it out with timed charges." The Sergeants all reacted involuntarily, Reynolds with a hiss of breath, Stark with a grunt, and Sanchez with a minor but uncharacteristic frown. The refinery was a
mojo
target, all right, but it was comfortably under the umbrella of the foreign troops defending that area. Worse, the 3-D contours of the map projection merely emphasized that the only feasible approach was across a dust plain where the platoon would stand out like silhouettes on a firing range.
"That's a very difficult approach, Lieutenant." Stark spoke mildly and with incredible understatement, but in a tone that conveyed volumes.
Conroy nodded slowly, then looked up with some irritation. "I know that, Sergeant." She glanced at Reynolds and Sanchez, reading the same concern in them that Stark had voiced. "It's not difficult, it's impossible,
unless
the enemy sensor net is blind to us."
Intriguing. Stark's estimation of the Lieutenant jumped slightly higher. She'd picked up enough tactics to see the obvious (which was far from a given with new officers), and she hadn't minded admitting the mission was tough instead of playing mindless cheerleader for the Brigade brass.
"Blind, sir?" Reynolds was clearly curious. Sensor nets were notoriously redundant in both scan gear and search capabilities. If they didn't see you on infrared, they'd look for image matches, or motion, or ground tremors, or what-all else. The countermeasure gear on the battle armor was incredibly good at hiding or confusing signatures, but moving to attack through a dust plain was like shining a spotlight on your head and singing the latest neoanarchist anthem on an all-frequency comm broadcast.
"Sort of." Conroy looked uncomfortable, then shook her head. "I can't tell you any more. Just accept that for mission planning purposes the enemy sensor net in that area will be blind."
Stark bit back an angry rebuttal, fighting to keep his expression composed. Sanchez, though, face now calm to the point of apparent boredom, cleared his throat, then began speaking in dispassionate tones that suggested that some other Platoon had been receiving the brief. "Lieutenant, a vital precept of mission planning is to ensure essential knowledge is shared among those most likely to need it. If something should happen to incapacitate the Lieutenant or even to disrupt her communications with the rest of the Platoon, the Squad leaders will need to be aware of tactical information that seriously impacts on their ability to successfully accomplish the mission."
Stark fought down a smile, wondering if Sanchez had long ago memorized a mission planning text just so he could use the words like this someday, or had simply kept a copy of the relevant verbiage scrolling across his own screen, ready to verbally download it if necessary.
I may never know what that guy is thinking, but he is one sharp grunt.
Lieutenant Conroy started to reply, chewed her lip for a few moments, then nodded slowly. "I. . . guess that's right. You guys need to know this background if you're going to carry this op out." A more experienced officer, one with more self-confidence in her job, would have told Sanchez to shut up and do his job anyway, but Conroy was new enough to be manipulated a bit. "About three months back," Conroy continued, "we managed to insert a new worm in the opposition sensor net in that sector. Since then, it's been laying low and monitoring activity to build up a bank of events. When it's activated, it'll block the real sensor readings for the area we're in and draw on the event bank to project a believable picture of what's going on there to the alert circuits."
"Clever," Sanchez noted approvingly, echoing Stark's thoughts on the matter. Worms had been around for years. Problem was, so had watchdogs, and the watchdogs had gotten very good indeed. A worm that simply blanked sensor readouts would be spotted and overridden in milliseconds. More sophisticated worms had mimicked the proper sensor picture to create the impression that all was well, but in a net monitoring every fall of gravel, the watchdogs had quickly learned to spot the faked inputs. Months of real readings, drawn on to build the bogus picture, would keep the watchdogs fooled for quite a while. One hoped.
"How did they find something good enough to do that?" Vic wondered out loud. "The only thing tougher than the enemy bunkers is the defenses they've got against information attacks."
"Urn . . ." Conroy looked even more uncomfortable, belatedly realizing that after disclosing the worm's existence she'd have to discuss other details. "I've been told it's a variation on the Mitchell Virus."
"Oh, hell!" Stark exclaimed. "Isn't that the junk that's been screwing up our own systems for the past several decades?"
"Right," Vic confirmed. "Developed by the Air Force as an information weapon, but it escaped during testing, contaminated friendly systems, and we've never been able to completely wipe it out because it was designed to mutate."
"It didn't escape, Sergeant Reynolds," Conroy corrected sternly. "It exceeded mission testing parameters."
Whatever you want to call it,
Stark thought,
but it still adds up to the worst case of information fratricide anybody has ever heard of.
Which didn't mean there hadn't been worse cases, just that anything worse might have been kept quiet. "Well," he noted out loud, "anything that's given us so much trouble ought to screw up the enemy a bit, too."
"So it's supposed to blind the enemy sensors. How long will the worm hold and how much will it hide?" Reynolds demanded, focusing on the key issues while the rest of them were still absorbing the surface data.
Conroy looked even more uncomfortable. "They wouldn't say how long."
"Which means they don't know." Stark's statement earned a glare from the Lieutenant and a wry smile from Reynolds.
"Probably not," Conroy eventually admitted. "As to how much, there're limits. Too strong a signal will burn through. At that point the enemy information defenses will identify the false reporting problem and either kill the worm or bypass it." She indicated a point on the map on their side of the dust plain. "That's why we can't ride all the way in. Transport would put out too strong a signal to hide. The APCs will take us to here and then we have to walk in and back out."
Reynolds nodded. "That's why timed charges? To keep events down until we're clear?"
"Right, Sergeant." Conroy indicated a fortification symbol about a kilometer forward from the refinery. "With the dust plains around the site, the enemy hasn't worried much about surprise attacks. The only fixed defense is this bunker. Intelligence says it probably only holds three sentries, but it's got decent flrepower and also controls two remote firing pits here and here." Heavy weapons symbols glowed brightly to the left and right of the fortification.
"Who's inside, Lieutenant?" Stark asked. "Pros or wannabes?" The position seemed both too small and too isolated to be part of the regular enemy defensive line, but there still could be well-trained defenders there. Despite the employment guaranteed by the apparently endless lunar war, several militaries were still hiring out units, often damned good units, but professional grunts were expensive as well as skilled. Hiring civilian mercenaries cost a lot less, which looked like a good deal to those who didn't realize that people don't put their lives on the line for paychecks. There had to be something more driving them, some higher sense of duty, something the mercs with their fancy uniforms and military playacting lacked.
"Mercenaries, Sergeant, hired by the foreign corporation that owns the refinery." Conroy suddenly smiled. "Intelligence reports they're from some outfit calling itself the Black Death Battalion."
The Sergeants laughed quietly. Professional soldiers had learned the more grandiose a merc unit's title, the less actual threat it presented.
The Lieutenant singled out Reynolds with a gesture. "First Squad goes in to take out that guardpost. It'll be blinded by the worm, but you'll have to move very carefully that close to enemy personnel."
Reynolds eyed the map, absorbing every detail even though it would be available in her Tactical throughout the mission. "And very quietly that close to implanted sensors."
The Lieutenant nodded back. "Yes, Sergeant. Very quietly. Second Squad, Sergeant Sanchez, will enter the refinery and place the charges in accordance with the orders in your Tactical. Sergeant Stark, your Third Squad will take up covering positions along this corridor." Symbols flashed on the map, detailing planned soldier positions and movements. "Just like in your Tactical," Conroy added with extra emphasis as she stared straight at Stark. "No deviations."