Episode 32

Walking the Edge

I can’t say I was ever close to Four-eyes. He was smart and he had no sense of humor, but his absence bothered me more than I would have thought. I missed the wet blanket. When you’re part of a team for a long time, then you lose a member or two, you feel it almost like you’d miss a lost finger or something. And all of us missed Howland. He was the old-school no-nonsense soldier who reminded everyone of their dad. You couldn’t help but look up to the guy. He’d saved his share of lives on the battlefield, always calm and cool. Hell, I never even heard him cuss. He was just there, getting stuff done. A mercenary’s merc.

But even at the cost, we’d been lucky. Turned out there had been five tanks coming at us. We’d wrecked one, damaged another, then the boys had come in from behind and knocked out a third before the last two retreated. We’d been damned lucky there hadn’t been more of them. Or worse, air support.

We waited for the trucks to come and haul the supplies back to base, then we’d been told it was time to move again.

It took us a while to find Leighton. He’d been sniped and dropped in the bushes. Never had a chance. I didn’t know him well, since he’d only been in the company for a few months. He’d never cash in on his bonus now. I told myself I’d throw some roses on his grave, whenever he got a grave back Kantillon.

Three days later, I found myself walking down the edge of a well-paved highway along with most of the boys. It seems ridiculous that men are still marching in this day and age, but that’s the way it goes. Never enough vehicles. And I’d lost my jeep. The other jeep had been smashed too. I decided that when I retired, I was gonna buy and ship a couple of those to the mansion I’d build out in the boondocks somewhere. I’d have a golf course, too. And I’d drive my hoverjeep around on it. And down to my rifle range. And then on to the strip of perfect beach on the edge of my property, where the local swimsuit models would do their daily photoshoots. Of course, half of them would be topless, you know, and the golden light of the setting sun reflecting off their tanned bodies, and they’d all call me Big Tommy and–

“Yo, Tommy,” said Jock, interrupting my very important thoughts.

“Yeah?” I said, snapping back to the dreary reality of a long march.

“About 50km left to Corwis.”

“Great,” I said. “We could drive that in 20 minutes, if we had a jeep.”

“If wishes were horses, then bears would be Catholic.”

“I don’t think that’s how it goes, Sarge.”

“You just don’t recognize education when you hear it, Corporal.”

The colonel had ordered the whole outfit on the move even though he seemed to have smoothed things out with our unhappy allies. Some of the Ulimbese stayed behind to hold the area, but the rest of them were advancing on the Corwistalian capital. For what we didn’t know for sure, but rumors were that we were going to be assisting the local political process through non-electoral means. Some Ulimbese units were moving north as well, but our groups kept to themselves.

I missed the hotel, but the quicker we could get done whatever we were supposed to get done and get the heck out of here, the happier I’d be. This whole thing had been a clusterfrag from the beginning.

“So,” I said, “you hear anything else on our mission?”

“Just the same-old same-old. We’re probably going to take out one guy and put in some other guy who will do whatever the big intergalactic corporations want him to do.”

“And the Ulimbese get what out of this?”

“Beats me,” Jock said. “Maybe they get to keep what they’re taking.”

I looked around at the rolling countryside and brown grass. We passed a few houses here and there and occasionally some kids would watch us over hedges. It was colder up here and there had obviously been some frosts, as the dead grass evinced.

It wasn’t anything I’d care about. Maybe the Ulimbese were short on farmland. Or maybe they just wanted a bigger slice of the globe.

Occasionally we’d be passed by trucks full of rocks. There was some mining operation around here. I thought back to the freighter. Mining equipment and rifles. Hmm.

“Look,” I said, “if the Ulimbese are taking the capital but we’re helping replace the ruler, will he be their puppet? Or will they want to keep the place for themselves and say hell with our plan? Or–”

“You sound like Four-eyes,” Jock said.

He was right. I did. So I shut up. Whatever the larger plan was, it didn’t matter to us. We had a job to do, and we were going to do it.

We stopped for our hourly break and I sat on the curb beneath what I assumed was a speed limit sign. I took a sip from my canteen and did some math. At the current rate, we’d get there tomorrow morning. You might think it was stupid to take a ten minute break every hour, but when you’re carrying a rifle and a pack, it works a lot better than pushing until you’re burnt out, then taking a long break. Little bites of break left you refreshed, like eating small amounts of food is better than starving all day before eating like a python.

So far, the ground we were covering was occupied by the Ulimbese. We passed their checkpoints now and again and they stood aside as we passed. Occasionally, some crazy Corwistalian would disrupt our column. At one point a big truck came barreling into the line ahead but no one was hurt except the driver. He unfortunately died of what we call “spurting sieve” syndrome. Very sad.

My back was feeling pretty decent. A medic had worked on it with some sort of weird chiropractic treatment and other than the bruising, I wasn’t feeling quite so crimped. It actually felt pretty good to march.