The Tejano Conflict (10 page)

“G2A,” Gunny said. “Under the size limit.”

“Big enough,” Jo said.

“Might want to hose 'em before they get the other one,” Gunny said.

“Teach your grandfather how to use a fork,” Gramps said.

The second drone chattered.

Jo accessed the drone's feed on her heads-up. The troops were out of the carrier and moving under the cover of the dust though the drone's IR saw them just fine. Eighteen, twenty, still on their feet. They were shooting at the drone with carbines, and another G2A rocket went up—

“You'll want to move your aircraft—” Jo began.

Too late. Even as Gramps banked the drone, it blew into incandescent smithereens.

“Well, shit,” Gramps said. “Hope Rags doesn't take that out of my pay.”

“Gunny?”

“Ah'm already on the way.”

– – – – – –

Gunny led two squads a short jaunt to the viewpoint. She had twelve riflemen, one light machine gun, a rocket launcher, and two grenadiers. Somebody had put a steel bench there, on a carved-flat section of ground next to the path that wound down the hill. A place to sit and rest, watch the sunrise, maybe. Probably they never figured it would be used by an army to cover enemy infantry coming up the side . . .

“Make some noise,” Gunny said.

The grenadiers unshipped their launchers, 6x40mm Milkor M9s. Built like old-fashioned revolvers, they were reliable, cheap, and accurate, effective to four hundred meters with the ammo they were being allowed.

They started shooting, multiple small explosions followed, and anybody down there who thought they were just going to storm the hill and kick ass had a fast change of heart.

“Gunny?”

“Ain't nobody coming up unannounced, Cap.”

“You need any help?”

“Sheeit.”

Gunny raised her carbine, spotted somebody a hundred meters down who poked his head up. Bad move on his part.

She didn't smile as he fell, but she felt pretty good. The war had begun, and this was what she did. They had this under control. This was why she got up in the morning.

– – – – – –

Jo shook her head. This was not a com she was happy to hear.

“A hurricane?”

Gramps said, “Yep. Churning along in the Gulf of Mexico and all of a sudden headed right in our direction.”

“I don't recall seeing that in our background briefing.”

“Because it wasn't. Our field of battle is just over 160 from the Gulf, and even storms that move directly this way tend to fall apart when they hit land. Generally, this results in some breezes and a lot of rain dumping in a short time, nothing an anchored spray-frame igloo can't handle.”

“But . . . ?”

“But the bad weather that was heading south of here took a turn in our direction. They give them names here, and Hurricane Bruce is a Category 5 storm, which means it is as big and bad as they get. At the moment, there are winds gusting to 275 kilometers an hour near the center, and if it continues on its present course, it will start raining and blowing here in twenty-four hours. It will slow as it reaches land, but it will have enough momentum to pack a hefty punch by the time the eye reaches us. Sustained winds of 150 kph, gusts to 185 or so. Plus the odd tornado spun off there and there.”

“Wonderful. Whatever happened to the promise of weather control?”

“Well, they managed to halt global warming but not reverse it, and the technology for preventing these kinds of storms is iffy at best. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Once a hurricane or typhoon gets this well organized, it is, pardon the expression, pissing into the wind to try and break it up. Too much power to stop.”

She didn't say anything to that.

“Hey, it's not my fault, I didn't do it. When we got here, it was a tropical depression two thousand klicks away; nobody knew it was going to do what it did. The predictions were wrong.”

She shook her head. “Crap.”

“Well, the rain falleth on the just and unjust alike.”

She nodded. That was true. Whatever problems it caused them, it would also cause the enemy; still, bad weather could be worse than anything the other side could throw at you.

“Are these houses up here structurally safe?”

“For the weather coming at us? In a word, no.”

“Okay. We'll set up the igloos.”

The heat of the day was little abated by darkness; near midnight, and still hovering around body temperature, plus the humidity must have been near 90 percent. Hot and muggy, and the threatened rain that might have cooled things off passed well north of them. Gunny saw the flashes in the distance, but the thunder didn't reach this far.

Of course, there was more rain on the way, according to Gramps. Big rain. Come the morrow, the field of battle was going to get soggy.

She'd held off eating until her watch was over. Field rats were never a reason to look forward to supper.

Her choices had been soy-chicken à la king, saitan beefsteak, or pasta with red sauce. Or the classic favorite, mock-tuna potpie. She had gone with the saitan. It wasn't the tastiest faux-meat in the galaxy, but it had a real texture.

She came off her watch to find Singh tucking into his own field rations, eating as if it was the best thing he'd ever tasted.

“You
like
that shit?”

He smiled around a mouthful of something not quite recognizable. “Sah. When I was in the army at home, the joke was that if the choice was between our field meals and our boots, the boots would cook faster and taste better. Compared to that? This is a gourmet dinner.”

Gunny laughed.

Jo drifted over.

“Hey, Cap. You want a bite of delicious fake steak?”

“Thank you, no. My pasta is still deciding if it is going to send me to the latrine with the FR runs. What Rags buys for us to eat is probably surplus from that war for the Alamo, back in the day. I think there was some dinosaur in mine.”

The house turned out to be in pretty good shape. Whoever had squatted there had taken good care of it. The interior walls had been painted in the last couple of years, the floors were clean, no trash piled up. There wasn't any running water, nor electricity, but the outhouse out back wasn't too bad. Except for the one section of collapsed roof covered with a tarp that kept the rain out, it seemed sound. But the air circulation was for crap. Even with all the boarded windows and doors swung open, it was like an oven in there.

They could have rigged one of the vehicle ACs to pump cold air into the house, make it easier to sleep, maybe, but that would take a lot of fuel, and that wouldn't solve the problem of walking outside and getting hit in the face with the heat. Better to acclimate yourself to the climate and live with it. Moving from a cool building into a hot summer and back was bad for the respiratory system. Contributed to lung and sinus problems, least that's what Wink said.

Of course, so was breathing gun smoke and fuel exhaust. Plus the storm coming in would get here tomorrow and start cooling things off. Assuming they were still here.

Jo said, “Remind me again of why we do this?” She waved at the hot night.

Gunny grinned. The insect repeller's hum was low and constant, but it did keep the mosquitoes at bay, mostly. Step outside the repeller's field, and the little vampires would be all over you, even with the confuse 'em patches. You would think somebody here in the cradle of human civilization would have figured out how to get rid of mosquitoes by now, but apparently no matter what they tried, there were always bugs that didn't get the memo.
Mate with that sterile male? No, thank you, I don't like his looks. Death hormone in the DNA? We'll evolve our own. Poison? Yum!
Now and then, one got past the repellers, too. Too stupid to die out . . .

Gunny said, “The glory, the adventure, the chance to travel the galaxy and meet exotic people and aliens!”

Jo laughed. “I remember that recruiting earworm. Always a new batch of young and ignorant cannon fodder stepping up. The road to victory is paved with newbs.”

Gunny chewed on a bite of the meat substitute. This particular delight had a consistency somewhat like warm rubber, but with half the taste. She set the FR plate on the foldout bench next to her, drank tepid, but pure, water from the vacon bottle. Now there was a useful, and mostly workable piece of technology, and one that performed all the better for the high humidity. It condensed pure water from the vapor in air, and would fill itself to capacity here in twenty or thirty minutes. In a desert, it would take an hour or longer to do the same, but as long as there was any moisture in the atmosphere at all, it would work. Solar and motion powered a rechargeable e-cell battery good for what, thirty years? And the failure rate on the things was near zero.

Drink it dry and pretty soon, you'd have a fresh liter of water anywhere you went, long as you didn't lose the sucker. One of the first things you learned to do was keep track of your water bottle. Drink, stick it back into the belt holder. Whoever invented this must have made a fortune. Gunny took another sip and raised her bottle in a silent salute. Then she holstered the flask.

Too bad the wick-away-moisture clothes didn't work as well. Fungal infections were always lurking on hot and wet battlefields, even with the chems circulating.

There's a fungus among us, and he noshes on our crotches . . .

Crickets sawed away in the darkness, and Gunny remembered that there was some kind of formula connected to the speed of their noise and the temperature. Hotter it was, the quicker the chirps, but she couldn't remember the numbers. Didn't matter. She knew hot when she felt it.

“Anything new?” Gunny asked.

“Nope. We're up here, the enemy is down there. We have the hill, they want it, and each of us has enough troops to make the swap unlikely. They'll probably bring up reinforcements, we'll bring up ours. Maybe somebody starts shooting, then we see how it goes. Simple. We've had a lot worse duty.”

“Maybe we should build a campfire and roast something, tell old war stories,” Gunny said.

“Right, give them a focus for a heat-seeker if they want to try one. Not to mention warming up the night more than it already is.”

“Our part of the glorious war.”

“I talked to Gramps,” Jo said. “He's still poking around the whole thing with the Bax.”

Gunny shook her head. “Why is it lately that no matter where we go, there is some kinda fucking
intrigue
we have to deal with? Can't we have just a plain old shooting battle where all we have to do is drill holes and take names? All this wheels-within-wheels shit gets old.”

“Man proposes, God disposes,” Singh said.

Both fems looked at him. He shrugged. “Whenever you run into a situation that you cannot control, we on Ananda often find it convenient to blame it on God.”

Both fems grinned. Jo said, “You don't sound like much of a believer, Singh.”

“Sah, I was, when I was young. One only needs spend a short time looking around to find examples of ugliness that no benevolent god would reasonably allow. Faith falters in the living of life.”

“But the gods don't work by the same rules as people,” Gunny said, “so we can't understand their bigger picture.”

“An old argument, sah. If we are but insects in the sight of a god, then there is no point in our worshipping or trying to understand them. If they exist, I cannot see them as anything remotely like us. The priests might believe they can translate to the rest of us, but I cannot believe it. Not to offend any beliefs you might have.”

Jo chuckled. “Contrary to the old saying, there
are
plenty of atheists in foxholes. Gunny and I haven't spent a lot of time in temple or church.”

“You look thoughtful, Singh. Somethin' else?”

He looked at her. “I was wondering if you were going to eat the rest of that?”

Gunny laughed. She handed him the FR. “Have at it, my young philosopher.”

– – – – – –

Once her support troops arrived, there was no need for Kay to remain at the stream. Her side's troops could patrol the area, and until the opposition decided to send more of their soldiers, if they did, crossing the little waterway would be a losing proposition.

Kay faded back into the trees and began a steady trot away from the site.

Much of war consisted of holding strategic territory, and sometimes, an hour or two was sufficient to tip the balance your way. An entire battle could turn on a single action, a second faster, a bullet dodged, a claw deflected.

There was a different smell in the air. Distant rain? That would go with the forecast Demonde Captain had tendered earlier. A storm. It had been too long since she had defied a storm . . .

She had accomplished her mission and could return to base and rest if she wished. She didn't need rest; there had been no great output of energy required. She would instead find another action to attend. If Jo Captain was involved in such, she would join her.

As she worked her way back toward her chosen exit from the forest, she suddenly caught a scent she recognized.

The male Vastalimi. Not far.

She slowed. This was not a sector controlled by the enemy. What was he doing here?

Curiosity was not as strong a trait among her kind as it was humans, but still. One of her kind, perhaps the only other of her kind on this world?

She had to go and look.

– – – – – –

Kay stepped into the clearing carefully though she knew that the male knew she was there.

He waited until she was twenty meters away before he turned around. He did it slowly and made no move toward his holstered pistol, his hands wide of his body, claws retracted, to show his lack of killing intent.

Her own rifle was slung, her pistol holstered.

He was tall, well muscled, his fur lustrous and thick, and his body set balanced.

“Ah,” he said. “At last. I scented you earlier.” He spoke in
Govor
, which was her own first language. It was not the most common tongue among The People.

They were from the same region? Interesting.

“And I you,” she said. “I am
Kluth
fem. My humans call me ‘Kay.'”

“
Grey
masc,” he said. “You want family history?”

“Not necessary, given the circumstances.”

“Agreed.”

He paused, then said, “There was another fem. I understand she died.”

“As did the one who killed her.”

He nodded. “That one has not been found.”

“Good luck with that.”

They regarded each other. She caught a hint of his musk, and it indicated . . .
interest
 . . .

Kay was a long way from Vast, and outside of a brief, if enjoyable liaison with Wink Doctor, she'd had no sexual contact with another for quite some time. Her last lover on the homeworld, Jak, had been satisfactory in that regard, but that had ended badly for other reasons.

She felt her own hormones rise. Too bad this male was with the enemy. Good that she was downwind, so he didn't catch her own interest . . .

“You have been with your humans long?” he asked.

“Some years.”

“I have been with mine but a few months. They respect my abilities, but that is overlaid with fear and suspicion.”

“Sad for you.”

He shrugged. “We are hired claws. Outlanders among aliens. It is the way of such.”

“I regard my humans as family.”

“Really? How delightful for you.”

For some reason, that statement resonated well. She felt compelled to tell him a personal truth: “When I left Vast, it was because I was considered a troublemaker. I made political waves. I did not expect to be with family again. It has been an unexpected reward.”

“Then we have something else in common. Few were unhappy to see me depart the homeworld. Well-adjusted People don't leave Vast, do they?”

“Mostly not, no,” she said.

He smiled. “So here we are, two malcontents working as warriors for a species not our own, and on opposite sides of a conflict. Sad for both of us, given the rarity of our kind out here. It precludes more . . . pleasant activity.”

She matched his smile. “My mother warned me about smooth-tongued males like you.”

“I should hope so. Tell me, how do you see this conflict?”

“Brief, bloody, and our side victorious.”

He laughed. “A fem after my own heart! I can agree with the first two, but I wonder why you offer the third, save for a general optimism?”

Sharp, this one.
She said, “I have been in many engagements with my humans. They are more adept than most. There have been times when outright victory escaped us, but we have not lost outright, either.”

“Ah. I cannot say the same. Mine are not particularly inept, but they have sometimes performed less than optimally. Still, win or lose, I get paid.”

“No victory bonus?”

“Yes, but the rate without that is sufficient. Why would I need more?”

She nodded. A sensible attitude. She liked that.

“I take their pay, I serve to my ability,” he said. “Yet I confess that, even having just met you, I find in this moment that I would feel somewhat . . . bereft if I had to kill you.”

“I would strive to keep you from such misery, so far away from home.”

He laughed. “Oh, a fem with a sense of humor is a jewel beyond measure!” He regarded her for another moment. “Will you offer
prigovor
?”

She considered it. She didn't want to kill him, either, even though it would be to the Cutters benefit. “Not at this time,” she said.

“Good. Nor shall I. Perhaps if we both survive this conflict, we might speak again, when we are not paid enemies?”

“I would like that,” she said. And she found that notion to be a happy one. Something about him . . .

“As would I. Survive,
Kluth
fem.”

“Survive,
Grey
masc.”

He turned and padded away from the clearing. He definitely moved well.

– – – – – –

Jo felt as much as she heard or smelled Kay when she arrived. That the Vastalimi could wend her way past enemy sentries outfitted with spookeyes or EV augs was no surprise.