Stark's War (12 page)

Stark had dressed and shaved long before, moving quietly in the predawn silence of the darkened bunker. Now he sat, listening to his Squad stir. Soldiers moved, exchanged greetings, went for" breakfast, or checked the plan of the day for work and sentry duty assignments. He heard Corporal Gomez chewing out a Private for sloppy appearance. Gomez had an intensely precise way of spelling out the many personal and professional shortcomings of anyone who didn't meet the standards she thought Stark expected. It was unlikely that Private would risk her wrath again.

Finally, Stark rose and entered the corridor, actually a narrow shaft through the bunker granted dignity by the term. A quick breakfast first, he decided, despite his lack of appetite, then roll call.
Have to make sure I don't look nervous. That'd make everybody else nervous, too. So, do I tell the troops action might be around the corner?
It seemed absurd, after the night's quiet, that the silence from above had made that possibility more hazardous.
The brass never panics into action when inaction can cause us more trouble. Now we get to wonder a little longer just how bad it'll be and who'll get hammered. The Squad deserves to know about the ratings, though, even if the sentry hasn't
already gotten a dump on them from another bunker and spread the word.

Even after all this time, his first step was too strong, so Stark had to catch himself on his desk to keep from rising off the floor. The body never quite accepted it wasn't home, habitually acting as if it were the Earth beneath it. The first misstep was almost a daily routine here on the lunar perimeter, defending America on its current and only front lines.

0730, Lunar Adjusted Time. Morning roll call, like every morning on the line, his Squad falling in for work assignments, updates, and whatever else Stark felt like tossing in. Not like back on the World, the cloud-bannered Earth that floated overhead in distant reminder of home. There, roll call caught the occasional soldier off-base and Absent Without Official Leave with a new "friend" or maybe in a ditch with a major headache and empty pockets. That couldn't happen here, where the only things within walking distance were more bunkers and enemy defenses itching to conduct target practice on any American soldier who wandered close enough. But you called the roll here anyway, to keep things structured, to keep a routine.

Corporal Gomez snapped a salute as Stark approached. "All present,
Sargento.
Work and sentry details assigned."

"Fine." Gomez had developed into such a good Corporal it was tempting to let her run things on auto sometimes, except he'd seen that trap before. Good noncoms ran things well as long as you respected them and pulled your share. "Got some word."

A ripple of disquiet ran through the ranks. That meant something nonroutine, and nonroutine usually meant more work or more risk, if not both.

"I guess it's been quiet lately." Awkward beginning, but Stark had never claimed to be a great speaker. "Got word last night that mil vid ratings are down. Five points." A staggered reaction ran through the Squad as each soldier processed the information. "That big a drop is going to hurt revenue, and that means things are likely to get exciting soon. Maybe not for us, but maybe so." Worry, excitement, tension showed on individuals, sometimes chasing each other across a single face. "Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. Make sure your gear is at one hundred percent, because it might be real short notice. Questions?"

The veterans knew enough not to ask for details Stark didn't have, while the two newer soldiers hesitated to speak and show ignorance. Private Kidd, one of the recent replacements, finally half raised her hand. "Sergeant, when will we know if we're on tap for something?"

"When we know." The vets smiled derisively as Kidd looked abashed. Stark unbent enough to elaborate; he'd been a new recruit once and asked his own share of dumb questions. "I'll pass on any word I get, soon's I get it. If we're lucky, somebody else will get handed this one. Anything else?" he asked the room. "Then carry on." He turned to Gomez. "They're looking pretty good."

Gomez nodded back. "For a bunch of slack Earthworms, they're not bad." A chorus of mock groans arose from the ranks as Gomez grinned. "You heard the Sergeant. Carry on. And don't let any good words from him go to your heads."

The Squad broke ranks, heading for their individual assignments.
The give-and-take felt good,
Stark thought, a sign morale was doing okay. Manning the front line wore soldiers out, sitting in a cramped bunker through weeks of inactivity punctuated by occasional spasms of fear and violence. He spoke quietly to Gomez. "We need to keep them busy, next couple of days, keep them from thinking too much about what might happen."

"Yeah, Sarge," Gomez agreed soberly. "You sure you should have told 'em?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. You don't keep your people in the dark, Anita. Treat them like you'd want to be treated in their place. This way they'll be ready, mentally and physically. That's important."

"Sure. Makes sense." Corporal Gomez rubbed her palms together, frowning into the distance. "I got a bad feeling about this one, Sarge. It's been a long time since headquarters screwed us. Might be our turn again."

"Might be. Worrying won't make it any better if it is."

"Si, Sargento.
I'll make sure the Squad doesn't have time to get worked up. I'll keep them running so hard they won't even have time to think about Bunk Maneuvers."

"You figure out a way to get a grunt's mind off sex and I'll put you in for a medal." Stark gazed after his dispersing Squad.
What the hell? Isn't that . . .
? Nah. Of course not.
Sometimes he got startled, thinking he'd seen some soldier walking away who was no longer there, someone now dead or wounded too badly to ever fight again. Funny how he only got that feeling when he saw them going away from him. "See you later. I'm taking my walk."

"Enjoy." Gomez paused as she turned away. "Hopefully it won't be our turn in the barrel."

"Yeah. Hopefully."

Stark did a walk-through of the whole bunker, small as it was, every morning. Simple routine, to keep in touch and keep aware. He'd served under a Sergeant once who'd spent all day in his office. The Lost Sergeant, they'd called him, and gotten away with damn near anything out of sight of his doorway.

Troop living cubicles. Tight, four troops to a cube. Luxurious, some civ had called them, touring the excavation to stare sourly at raw lunar rock. He'd obviously been looking for another way to shave a few more bucks off of fighting a war, which was probably why headquarters had sent him to Stark's Squad. "Why three separate cubes instead of a single Squad cube for everyone?" the civ demanded.

Stark had extended one fist, slowly, while the civ's eyes widened appreciably. "People are trying to hurt us," Stark stated with exaggerated patience. "If they blow a hole through that rock, right there, I lose four soldiers. I'd hate that. But if this one room held my entire Squad, I'd lose twelve soldiers. I'd hate that a helluva lot worse."

The civ had squirmed under Stark's intense gaze, then rallied enough to speak again. "It's not very economical to build these extra sleeping cubes."

Stark nodded back, face unyielding. "It's cheaper than replacing twelve soldiers and a hole in the defensive line. Isn't it?" The civ had left hurriedly. Stark had never been told what the civ's report had said, but the bunkers had continued to be built with three sleeping bays, so headquarters had probably accomplished its dual goals of discouraging the intrusive civ and aggravating the notoriously difficult Sergeant Stark.

Chen occupied one of the cubes, bending under a bottom bunk to wield a hand-held vacuum against the fine dust that seemed to spontaneously generate out of the air in lunar living spaces. Since that fine dust could seriously screw up the fine electronic gear that kept humans alive up here, policing it regularly remained a tedious but necessary task.

"Hey, Sarge." Ghen looked up from his work with a tight grin.

"Hey, Chen. How's it going?"

Chen visibly hesitated before replying. "Fine, Sarge."

"The hell. What's bugging you?"

"Um . . ." Chen swung one hand to indicate the doorway to the cube. "We heard the doors got modified last time we were off-line, Sarge."

Stark stared dispassionately at the door edge where it poked out of the wall, a thick slab of metal necking down to a gleaming steel knife edge barely visible within its pocket. "Yeah," he acknowledged. "They boosted the explosive rams and modified the door edge to make sure the door can slam shut through any obstacle if there's decompression in the cube."

"What about the inhibit, Sarge?" Chen asked. "There's supposed to be an inhibit that'll keep the door from slamming shut if there's a grunt standing in the doorway."

"Yeah," Stark agreed again.

"But we were talking," Chen continued, "and it doesn't seem like the brass would risk-losing a whole squad to decompression just because one grunt is in the wrong place at the wrong time. We figure there's not really an inhibit at all, and that door's going to cut in half anybody who's in the way. Is that true?"

Never lie to the troops.
"I don't know that it's true and I don't know that it's not."

"So what should we do, Sarge? What should we do if at any moment there's a chance that door will slice in two any grunt who's standing in that doorway?"

"Don't stand in the damn doorway."

"Oh." Chen nodded vigorously. "Yeah. Okay, Sarge."

The stuff that passes for wisdom. If something's gonna hurt and you don't have to do it, don't do it.
Stark nodded back to Chen before moving on.

On through the small rec cube, lined with resistance gear every soldier had to work at for a few hours every day to keep their muscles from going on lunar vacation. Then the adjacent kitchen, a tiny cell with access to the rations and minimal food prep facilities. End up in the main command room, biggest space in the bunker, not that it qualified as big under any other criteria. Walls lined with monitors and readouts, the sentry posted to one side. When they got attacked, which happened occasionally when the enemy felt like probing for weak spots, most of the Squad would head outside and fight from firing pits deployed around the bunker. The bunker's own firepower, chain guns and grenade auto-launchers in a handful of mounts scattered along the outside terrain, was controlled from seats here.

Similar bunkers, the products of years of carefully concealed construction, were strung at irregular intervals all along the American perimeter guarding the lunar colony city of New Plymouth. Facing the American line, a matching string of unseen enemy fortifications dotted the face of the Moon. The Great Wall of China on Earth, rumor claimed, could be seen from space, like a dragon sprawled across the land. Stark had never seen it, as even continents were sometimes hard to make out on the blue-white ball that dominated the sky, but he had watched a vid of the Great Wall once, and laughed. Too big to defend, all those kilometers of wall, and too easy to destroy, sitting out in the open. Mankind had learned a lot about killing since those ancient stones were laid. The lines of defensive works on the lunar surface lay hidden, deadly snakes ready to strike at anyone who stumbled too close to their lairs.

Several soldiers were sweating their way through training drills on the weapons stations under the alert and unforgiving eye of Corporal Gomez. Off to one side, Private Mendoza had the morning sentry detail, watching the outside through the eyes of the local sensor net. Mendoza, bored as every sentry since Adam fell asleep guarding the apple tree, jerked to an attentive posture in his seat as Stark entered. Stark nodded to him, wandering over to peer past Mendoza's shoulder at the situation readouts.

Screens displayed a wild array of pictures, depending on the sensors they accessed. Infrared painted an unreal scene of glowing blobs, fuzzy with radiated heat. Vibration sensors displayed sudden swelling pings on a sector map where rock contracted or expanded under sun's heat or shadow's cold, the events all assessed natural due to randomness by the sophisticated artificial intelligence monitoring everything that happened on this part of the line.

As always, the view from the visual monitor drew Stark's gaze. Black-on-white, harsh shadows scissored across the dead landscape. Incredibly old rocks and equally old dust. From this angle, no Earth lit the sky with its small reminder of color and life. He remembered clouds, white patches in unnumbered shapes, parading across blue skies, and water in great, unconfined bodies, thundering ashore as surf on the beaches not far from his boyhood home. Huge trees blocking the sky, like the choking vegetation in the handful of jungle countries where he'd fought before coming here. And grass, of course, its trampled green blades always splashed with red in his mind's eye. All far away now, and almost unimaginable in this world of rock and dust, black shadows and white light.

"Above, the stars still bravely shine."

Mendoza's words broke across his reverie. Stark gazed down at him, slightly angry at the interruption and slightly curious at the words. Curiosity won out. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Mendoza looked a little abashed, as if he'd inadvertently shared his own inward thoughts. "It's something from an old poem. From the early twentieth century, about a battlefield."

"That doesn't tell me much."
Anything to distract me from this dead world around us and the potential for extra-hazardous combat. Besides, Mendo doesn't open up much, but he's damn well educated. Oughta be an officer, from what I've seen in his files.
Not for the first time, Stark wondered why Mendoza had enlisted instead of becoming an officer.
Maybe I'll find out someday, though I can't imagine quiet, modest Mendo succeeding in the career-obsessed, political world our officers live in.
"So, tell me more. How'd the poem go original?"

Mendoza glanced around the bunker, where he'd become the center of attention from Gomez's group as well as Stark, then grimaced apologetically. "I don't remember all of it, Sergeant. It was about a place called Flanders. Flanders fields. The first verse said something about rows of crosses there, marking the graves of dead soldiers, and then something about larks still singing in the sky above them despite all the fighting. I thought, while looking out at the Moonscape just now, there aren't any larks here, so maybe the stars would do."