Children No More-ARC Read online

"Amen to that, Gunny," Gustafson said.

  I pointed at the trees around the cleared area in the holo. "The one flaw in my plan is that we really do not want to have sixty people jumping into trees. Even if all the people making the leap are very, very good, the odds are that at least a few of them will get badly hurt."

  "The canopy is thick enough," Gustafson said, "that we might be able to land safely on it." His voice trailed off. "Might. I know at least a few folks who claim to have done it safely and without wearing heavy penetration-resistant body armor."

  "But it's not a good bet," Schmidt said.

  "No," Gustafson and I said at the same time.

  "So are we back to gassing from your ship?" Lim said.

  I shook my head. "No. The argument for not doing it remains." I stared at the complex and the forest around it. "How far back can you pull this holo?"

  Lim scrunched the complex to a quarter of the size it had been; the forest surrounding it grew considerably.

  I walked around the holo and studied the landscape. About five klicks northeast of the complex was a small cleared area. A similar one stood about four klicks to the west. I pointed at them. "Do we have enough data on these to get a better view?"

  Lim nodded and shoved the holo to the side until the northeast clearing was roughly in the center, and then she expanded it again. The surveillance footage was good: We could clearly see a dirt central area surrounded by a dozen huts.

  "Perfect," I said. "We can safely land in a small village and make our way overland to the complex. It'll be a haul, but if your teams aren't good at moving well in a jungle, you've got the wrong people."

  "They're good," Lim said. "As long as we allow reasonable time, covering that distance shouldn't be an issue. We'll have to proceed with some caution, but rebel troops aren't supposed to be anywhere nearby."

  "If they are," Schmidt said and shrugged, "we deal with them."

  We all nodded.

  I stared more closely at the village and magnified it again. The huts were shells, with big pieces of roofs missing. No humans were in sight. "How recent is this data?"

  "Less than a week old," Lim said.

  "Good," I said. "This one's deserted, so we shouldn't have to fight any villagers." I centered the holo on the western village and magnified it. Those huts were also wrecks. "Do the rebels destroy every place they hit?"

  Lim nodded. "Not immediately, but when they're done with it, yes. They kill the adult residents, impress the boys, set up a temporary base, eat any stored food, regroup, and repeat. They work with even worse equipment than the government, so they fight in classic guerilla style, never staying anywhere too long, hitting and running—you know the drill."

  "I do," I said, "and here the mess is good for us. Two units land in each of these locations. Each heads for its assigned corner of the complex. We sync up, and then we hit it."

  "That should work," Lim said, "but it still leaves us the job of gassing the place by hand."

  "Yeah," I said, "but with sixty people, a coordinated attack should give us enough coverage to take out everyone quickly. We should be able to swarm in and lock up the guards before any of them wakes up."

  "And if some of them are prepared for gas?" Schmidt said.

  "We shoot our way in," Gustafson said.

  "And a whole lot more people get hurt," Schmidt said, "including possibly some of the children."

  "Yes," Gustafson said, "including them. We've known about that risk since we signed on. All we can do is minimize it and hope for the best."

  "I'd hate to have to shoot a child," Schmidt said.

  "So would I," Lim said.

  "We all would," Gustafson said, "but if you're not willing to do it and the plan goes sideways, you can bet your ass they'll shoot you. Don't even start if you're not willing to finish."

  Schmidt rolled her head and said, "I didn't say that. I just wouldn't like it. I'll do what it takes. Always have."

  Gustafson's hand moved a centimeter toward her. "I know, Portia," was all he said.

  "We all will," Lim said.

  Silence enveloped the room. Before my thoughts could take me anywhere bad, I said, "So can you bring in the jump and gas gear?"

  "Not exactly," Lim said, "but close enough. Chu's people are going to buy what we need locally, using as many different vendors as they can manage. We've researched the options a fair amount, and it looks like we can get by with commercial jump gear and animal trank gas—all of it legal there for sport and hunting."

  "What quality level can we expect?" I said.

  Lim laughed. "We'll make sure that everything we acquire is in good working order, but we are talking sport equipment, not milspec ordnance. We can get target-competition chute harnesses, for example, but we can't buy any milspec individual powered gliders. As long as you don't expect us to look like a military unit, you should be happy."

  "What about weapons for each of us?" I said.

  "Anything we can carry has to be legal for sport use," Lim said. "Once we've secured the base, the government troops will resupply us."

  "And you trust them?" I said.

  Lim shook her head. "Of course not. Chu's people are also bringing in additional weapons now, as they have been for the past couple of months. We'll use them if need be."

  "My ship can ferry at least our gear," I said, "if it comes to that."

  "I was counting on it," Lim said, "and I'm certainly planning on bringing as much of my own kit as I can get away with."

  I pointed at the cleared area in the holo. "How are we crossing this?"

  "As far as we know, the rebels razed this zone simply to provide an easy killing field," Lim said, "but—"

  "I sure wouldn't want to count on it being safe," I said.

  "We won't," Lim said, "but we have to decide how best to clear our approach vectors. Cleaning mines and checking for more primitive traps could take a lot of very valuable time."

  We all stared at the holo for a few seconds.

  "We don't have to be quiet, right?" I said.

  "Correct," Lim said. "The rebels should all be out from the gas. If not, we'll have to fight the ones who are awake. Either way, there'll be no need for subtlety."

  "So let's not be quiet," I said. I pointed at some of the trees on the edge of the cleared area. "Let's remotely trigger anything waiting for us. All we need are a lot of quick-cut logging tools, stuff Chu's people should be able to get us on Tumani. We drop some trees, let their weight set off all the underground explosives, and follow them in."

  "We might damage the complex," Schmidt said, "and risk hurting the kids." She craned her neck a bit to look inside the holo from the top. "Then again, it looks like all the dorms are set at least ten meters inside the wall, so we have a buffer zone."

  "We should also be able to control pretty well the amount we drop," Gustafson said, "at least as long as we train everyone on the basics."

  "We can do that," Lim said.

  "Works for me," I said.

  Schmidt and Gustafson nodded their agreement as well.

  "Done," Lim said. "I'll make the arrangements." She stared briefly at each of us in turn. "Any other big issues before we move to team composition?"

  "Just one," I said. "Once we have the children, then what?"

  "Not your problem," Lim said. "Chu will pay you, and you'll be free to go."

  I gripped the edge of the table tightly so I wouldn't give in to my urge to push her far enough away that I couldn't easily hit her. She was right, of course; all I'd agreed to do was help secure the complex. Something in her answer, though, infuriated me.

  "It may not be my problem," I said, the words coming tight and clipped as I fought to sound calm, "but I'd still like to know."

  "Once we have the kids," Schmidt said, "we settle in and try to help them. Many of our team members have reintegration training, and we'll have more specialists waiting on Tumani to join us. We'll work with the kids until they're in good enough shape that the government can ret
urn them to their families or find them new homes."

  "How many of them still have families?" I said, aware my voice was louder than it should be but unable to quiet myself. "And how many of those remaining families want to take back a killer who was only a short while ago trying to slaughter soldiers of the government they're supporting? How many of them will want these kids to come home? It's not like they're the children they used to know."

  All three of them stared at me. No one moved. Each of them looked away for several seconds, knowing as I did that the violence you've seen, and worse, the violence you've done, stains you and breaks you in ways that no one can see but that are always there, just below the surface. No one without the same breaks ever really understands, but these three did.

  Finally, Schmidt spoke, her voice flat. "Most of their families are dead. Few of those who are alive will understand what they'd be signing up to handle, but helping the boys learn to live in normal society so they can return to normal lives is all we can do." She glared at me, and when she spoke again, her voice was high and fast. "You think we don't understand? You think I spend my leaves gossiping with friends who've never served? You think I don't realize how different from us all the civilians are?" She shook her head. "We'll do all we can. That's all anyone can do."

  "Of course," I said. "I apologize for my outburst."

  "No need, Gunny," Gustafson said. He clapped me on the shoulder. "If you'd been at any of the earlier meetings, you'd know you weren't alone."

  Lim nodded once without looking at me and motioned at the table. The holo shrank into a far corner. Images of all of our troops floated in front of us, service records and other stats hovering beside each of them. "Let's settle the squads," she said. She faced me. "We're running somewhat covert, so that if anything goes wrong, we leave behind as little data as possible available about each of us. Some of the people don't care who knows they were involved, but others are hoping no one finds out how they spent their time off."

  "Fair enough," I said.

  "You lead Black Team lead," Lim said. "I'm Blue, Top is Green, and Gunny is Red. Everyone else stays a number, unless they feel like giving their names. Even if some do, though, we use numbers until we've occupied the complex and locked up the adult rebels."

  We all nodded agreement.

  Lim swiped away the holo and told the table to bring up a fan of individual squad member data displays. "We'll sort out the teams," she said, "and go over the timing details one more time."

  "A third of the unit is already on Tumani," Lim said after we'd finished the team assignments. "They're securing us lodging—rental houses, not hotels—and setting up comm protocols with Chu's people. Chu is on her way there now, as is the second third of our group. The rest of us head out tomorrow morning. By going in these three waves, we shouldn't attract any attention; even a pit like Tumani has some business and tourist trade."

  "Tonight?" I said.

  "You're free," Lim said. "You'll take Gustafson and Schmidt tomorrow; they're posing as businesspeople who hired you for personal transportation and protection. We expect the station staff to check anyone arriving on his own ship, but given your background, that cover should work fine. Anything else?" She looked at each of us in turn.

  No one spoke.

  "Okay," she said. "Enjoy your last free night until this is over."

  Chapter 17

  Glen's Garden, planet Macken

  Gustafson and Schmidt retreated together, and though they invited me to join them for dinner, it was clear they'd prefer to be two, not three. Lim didn't even make a pretense of socializing; she left quickly and without comment.

  My body bristled with pre-mission energy, so I wasn't ready to go back inside Lobo. Instead, I caught a shuttle into Glen's Garden and had the machine take me to the opposite edge of town, to the small commemorative square where I'd first met Lobo.

  Or so I'd intended. Instead, I wound up on a new road that formed the boundary between a housing community and the rainforest. The original downtown was nowhere in sight. I told the shuttle I'd pay it to idle while I got my bearings. It offered to help, but for my purpose a different data source was far better.

  "How far from where we met am I?" I said to Lobo over the comm.

  "Point-to-point, ignoring roads, fifteen point seven kilometers," he said. The coordinates appeared on my contact overlay.

  "They've consumed that much of the rain forest in only three and a half years?"

  "Clearly they have," he said. "You've noted before the quality of the beaches here. That, plus the possibility of commercializing a new planet when the new jump gate aperture opens, has drawn a lot of people to Macken."

  I hadn't even thought about the aperture. "It's still not open?"

  "No, though the surrounding gate structure appears fully grown, so from what I can gather from the local data streams, everyone assumes the aperture will turn operational at any moment."

  "What do you think?"

  "I have more computing power than any entity or network of which I'm aware," Lobo said, "but even I don't pretend to understand the jump gates. Because the new part of the gate has looked for some time like it's ready to go, I can only guess that at some point the gate will open the aperture."

  "Guess? Gates always open new apertures when they're complete."

  "No," Lobo said. "The correct statement is that to date gates have always done so. Given that we have at best a very incomplete understanding of them, all we can do is assume that past behavior will dictate future action. That is an assumption, which is a kind of guess."

  "Fair enough," I said. "Let's hope we're out of this system before the aperture opens, or we could end up with a very crowded jump station."

  "Are you ready to give up on this town yet?" Lobo said.

  "No. I'll let you know when I am."

  "As you say, oh uselessly sentimental one."

  I ignored him and rode the shuttle to where I'd met him.

  The square was gone. A row of shops cut across where it had been. Their windows and walls hawked supposedly locally produced wares. You could buy everything from souvenirs made from genuine Macken rainforest trees, to pet fish grown on Macken but certified for off-world travel, to shirts woven from native Macken grasses—all at great discounts, the signs assured me.

  You can't go back, not in time and not in space, because time changes the spaces.

  I set off on foot for the waterfront, pushing my pace, wanting to burn away the excess energy and the gathering emotional gloom. I've never had roots, never thought of any place as home since I had to leave Pinecone. I've always avoided retracing my steps as much as I could, because when you don't age, it's a bad idea. I've long thought, though, that people who stayed in one place might be able to enjoy a kind of rootedness that had always eluded me. Now, I wondered if that was true anywhere outside my mind.

  I shook my head and kept moving, amazed at how quickly my mood was getting the best of me.

  As I drew closer to the ocean, the shops took an upscale turn, and more and more restaurants and bars lined the streets. I angled slightly in the direction of the beach house, walked until I heard music I liked, and turned into the bar supplying it. The place was bigger than it appeared, a broad rectangle with a bar built from driftwood running the length of the left-hand wall and at the opposite end a stage raised only half a meter above the wooden floor. A five-person band was playing, a pair of holo banners on either end of the stage announcing them as Too Broke and the Hurt-Foot Scooters. A short, redheaded woman pranced back and forth singing in a throaty voice about a man who'd done her wrong. I listened to them as I ate a fish sandwich and a glass of some sort of melon juice at a corner table with a great view of both entrances. The fish was fresh and tasted wonderful and brought me back to the last time I'd eaten here on Macken, in a similar place, maybe even this one, and I remembered that for a brief time I had enjoyed that meal very much, just as I was enjoying this one.

  Maybe I'd had it all wrong.
Maybe going back was always possible, but only in your memories, only when the right trigger at the right moment transported you through time and space to some earlier instant powerful enough to have tattooed itself on your soul. Maybe collecting those was as good as it got.

  Maybe not, but the notion was enough that for the duration of that meal I was genuinely present and happy. When I left to meet Lobo, I moved with an unaccustomed ease that I embraced for as long as I could.

  Chapter 18

  Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

  Five two-meter-long bags leaned against the trees in front of us. Each bag was made of sturdy tent material and about as thick around as I am. Stitches of thread we'd woven from island grasses sealed the bags so they contained the sand that made them heavy and hard to hit. Slick lines of blood and streaks of sweat-soaked sand marked our work on them.

  I was exhausted and breathing hard and dripping sweat. The sun overhead glared at us, relentless and hot and so slow to move I would have sworn it never did. The sand under my bare feet scorched them.

  "Again!" Benny commanded.

  As he had taught us, Alex and I ignored our fatigue and charged our bags, grabbed their centers, and twisted to take them to the ground. We landed hard on top of them, raised our torsos, and began hitting them with elbows and fists and even head butts. Alex used primarily his full-size, stronger arm. I focused on striking with my elbows, which though scraped and raw hurt far less than my bloody knuckles.

  I heard movement behind me and twisted to the side just in time to avoid a kick in the stomach. I launched myself at my attacker, not even bothering to note which of the other guys it was. I tried to grab his torso and neutralize him, but I fell short as someone clutched my right leg and held me back.

  The two of them jumped on me, smothering me and hitting me in the stomach and back. I didn't want to hurt them but they were pounding on me and the pain was intense. I screamed and kicked and bucked. The body on top of me grunted and rolled off. I twisted to the left and sunk my elbow into the stomach of the other person. As I did, an arm slipped under my neck. I reached for it, couldn't breathe, and passed out.