Caliphate

Mindanao, Philippine Islands, 4 July, 2107

Hodge never knew what hit her. One moment Aguinaldo was telling her something, the next his body had practically disintegrated in a blizzard of hot metal shards while Hodge herself was knocked almost senseless by the blast and spun head over heels by something striking her right thigh.

When she recovered enough to rise to her hands and knees, she saw and smelled the blood, not hers she hoped, dripping from her helmet and Exo. Hodge shook her head to try to clear and felt a wave of nausea wash over her. That she'd emptied her stomach earlier didn't help her as she'd eaten again, hurriedly from a pouch, while on the track of her lost soldier. She re-emptied her stomach, the puke mixing with the scout sergeant's ghastly remains. Then she looked at the bloody, torn meat of her right thigh and wanted to puke again.

When the shock wears off, that's really going to hurt.

Already, Hodge's Exo had analyzed the damage and applied a nondisorienting general pain killer. It wouldn't make the damaged leg any better, but it would help Hodge make full use of what was left.

There was firing all around; that much she could hear even if her vision was blurry with concussion. An indistinct shape appeared over some rocks hard by. It was shouting something unintelligible and waving something that looked shiny. Automatically Hodge pointed her left hand at the shape, formed a fist and dropped it. A burst of fire from her Slag leapt out, ripping the bolo-wielding Moro to shreds. His ruined body tumbled back over the rocks.

"Charlie Niner-Six, Bravo Two-Three," Hodge gasped out. "Ambush. We're fucked."

"Hang on, Two-Three," answered Thompson's calm voice. "I've got a drone inbound, ETA three minutes. Air support is coming."

"No go on the air support," Hodge answered. "I think they're all mixed in among us. Wait, out."

Even as Hodge said that, her left arm was once again pointing at a Moro, this one carrying a rifle rather than a bolo. The stream of fire that lanced out practically sliced the man in two.

"Report," she managed to get out.

"One: Sergeant Caudillo's dead . . . .three others down. Pinned. Returning fire."

"Two: Six left unhurt, two wounded. Holding on. They're between us and first. I think third's out of it. What we gonna to do, El Tee?"

She waited in vain for a report from her third squad leader. "Sergeant Ryan," she ordered, "report. Anybody in third squad, report. Anybody?"

There was no answer from third. She'd had to force herself to keep the sound of desperate pleading out of her voice when she asked that last, "Anybody?"

"Ma'am, Sergeant Pierantoni here. I'm with second . . . close enough, anyway. The rest of the company's better than half an hour behind us. Maybe more; if they hit us here they might have something waiting back there. I don't think we're going to hold on that long."

Hodge had been up near the point, near Aguinaldo. One could argue she'd been too near the point, but that was for the future if, indeed, that argument was ever to be made. Third squad, which had been nearest to her, was destroyed, insofar as she could tell. Sure, it was possible there was a man out there wounded and alive, or one with broken communications. But the way to bet it was that they were dead or soon would be.

"Recommendations, Sergeant?" The drug in her system was all that allowed her to keep her voice human.

"You pull back to first. We'll cover you and first. Then we can take turns, bounding back."

"No go, Sergeant, I can't move far."

"I'll come for you."

Hodge's voice was both sad and determined. "No. Here's what I want. First squad?"

"Ma'am?"

"I'll cover as best I can from here. Get yourself back to second and the platoon sergeant. Sergeant P, carry out your plan once you and second and first link up. I'll . . . "

"No, ma'am, we'll wait."

Hodge wanted to cry, not just from the pain that was ebbing from her ruined thigh, but also from the knowledge that the life she'd hoped to have with Hamilton after she left the army was just not going to happen. She wanted to cry; what she didn't want was to argue.

"No. I've only got a little left in me. I need to use that to cover first squad."

"Ma'am . . . "

"Don't argue with me. First squad?"

"Ma'am?"

"If I can't get the order out; when you hear me fire, go."

Thompson and Hamilton could hear Hodge through the command circuit.

"Laurie, hold on. I'm coming," Hamilton cried into the radio, as he started tearing the jungle apart in an attempt to move farther, faster—

"Lieutenant Hamilton, hold fast," ordered Thompson in the same calm voice as usual. The captain had the good grace not to say, I warned you about this.

"Captain, that's—"

Hamilton couldn't quite bring himself to say it, that Hodge was the woman he loved. It would have been worse than Thompson saying, "I told you so." Instead, after a pause, he said, "That's one of ours. We can't just—"

"I'm aware, Lieutenant, of who she is."

Another voice, the forward observer sergeant's, piped up, "Captain, airship Pershing on station with a heavy load of ordnance. They're carrying whatever we might want to ask for. Well, short of nukes, they are."

The company was still pushing on through the jungle. In his head, and aided by a map painted onto his eye with a low-powered laser,

Thompson calculated the time it would take to get to Hodge against her very short life expectancy. No matter how he tried to calculate it, he kept coming up short. There was no way he and the troops would reach her in time.

"Private circuit, Lieutenant Hodge," he said into the radio. "Laurie, your plan is approved. We won't make it to you in time. I can deal you aces and eights to prevent capture. Your call."

"Give what's left of my platoon a chance to break contact, Captain," she answered. "And . . . "

"Yes?"

"Don't make John call in the dead man's hand . . . It wouldn't be fair."

"I understand. Let me know when."

"Yes, sir . . . .Sir, if you don't hear from me . . . if I'm not able—"

"I'll call it in myself, Laurie."

"Thank you, Captain. Hodge out . . . break, break . . . First squad; prepare to move."

Dragging her ruined right leg behind her, Hodge slithered to the blood-flecked rocks nearby. She extended a monofilament microviewer from her right glove and looked over the area first squad had been in. Already some of the Moros were out, rifles slung across backs and wavy swords in hand, chopping their way through the tough battledress and inner coolsuits of the dead and wounded troopers.

"Bastards," she whispered, before retracting the miniviewer and taking her rifle in hand.

The rifle, a Model-2098, had its own viewer, which was connected by radio to Hodge's helmet. In theory, and especially when augmented by the Exo to absorb recoil, one could fire the thing effectively from behind cover with only the armored hands exposed. Practice was better than theory, though, and practice said that the natural shooting position of rifle against shoulder and eye aligned with barrel was more effective.

Hodge had counted seven of the Moros out in the open, finishing off the wounded and making sure the dead were dead. Her firing position had her to the right side of the base of the rock gathering. Sensibly, she opted to take out the rightmost Moros first, thus keeping the rock between her and those she had not yet engaged. With a whisper, she instructed the rifle, "Activate. Fire on center of thermal signatures as you bear."

With that, she swept the rifle steadily from right to left. When the first thermal image was center of mass, it opened fire with a five round in a sixth-of-a-second burst, then repeated as its operator aligned it with the next target. Hodge was quick and four of the seven went down before the remaining three realized what was happening and dove for cover.

In seconds, Hodge's rock was deluged with fire, driving her back to shelter behind it.

"Go, first squad, GO!"

"Sir, Sergeant Pierantoni here. We're out of immediate danger . . . maybe half a klick from where we were ambushed. The El Tee's stopped firing right as we heard a pretty big blast. I think it's time. We can be seven- or eight hundred meters away before anything can hit."

"Concur, Sergeant P . . . break . . . Lieutenant Hodge? Lieutenant Hodge? . . . negative contact . . . break . . . FO? Does Pershing have an FAE pod ready?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Release on Lieutenant Hodge's position."

Much as one could only rarely train someone raised in Moslem culture to be a decent shot, so too the Moros expected that if Allah did not want them to rape their captives, He would say so or otherwise prevent it. If He allowed it, as He invariably did, it was because He wanted it to happen. If there was a different price to be paid for it, then that, too, was merely in accordance with the will of the Almighty.

Thus, by the time Hodge awakened from the blast that had propelled her into unconsciousness, the Moros had stripped her from her Exo and, apparently noticing she had tits, begun to strip her of her battledress. A line of them were forming up even as eight of them began staking her arms out and her legs spread. A ninth and tenth cut away her clothing, taking some care not to cut her so as not to damage the merchandise any further. A blond infidel with tits? She'd bring a high price from one of the datus, the Moro chieftains. Or maybe she could be presented as a gift to the sultan.

Hodge's vision swam in and out of focus. She raised her head and saw one of the Moros pulling out what she couldn't help thinking was a laughably small penis. In fact, she did laugh and was rewarded with a light kick to the head. That made her see stars and wretch yet again.

"Goodbye, John; I loved you," she whispered. "Anytime now, Captain. Anyti—"

She barely caught the flash as a huge thermobaric bomb detonated a few hundred meters overhead.

They found Hodge's lost soldier in among a group of Moros. That much satisfaction the men and women of her platoon had; at least their comrade hadn't been roasted alive. They found Hodge, herself, apparently raped, with her skin—where it had been exposed—dried and scorched and her body blue where it wasn't scorched black. (In fact, there had not been time for rape but the soldiers couldn't know that.) Her luxurious strawberry blonde hair was gone, except for a blackened, crispy residue next to her scalp. Her eyes . . . well, the less said about those, the better; Fuel Air Explosive did bad things to soft eyes.

The company set up a wide perimeter around the site. Within that perimeter, military police gathered DNA samples of every Moro body found. Those samples would be used in every village they cleared out. Adults who matched as being family of the ambushers would be killed, in every case.

It had long since become that kind of war.

Hamilton, suited but with his helmet off, grieved beside Hodge's body, arms wrapped around shins and rocking erratically. Yes, the lieutenant had responsibilities that he was neglecting but Thompson gave him a pass on those for a while.

Thompson still didn't say, "I told you so."

He did say, however, "I'm sending you back with the body. I'm allowed to send someone back and your platoon sergeant can handle things well enough for a week or ten days." That was being tactful; the platoon sergeant needed no lieutenant and would do better without having one whose nose he had to wipe.

Hamilton stopped his rocking and shook his head, "No. Being gone for a week or ten days would be a week or ten days I wouldn't be killing the people who did this. All in all, I'd rather be killing Moros than drinking in a bar in Iowa. She was from Iowa, you know."

"I knew." Thompson didn't bother to mention that "the people who did this" were already dead. He knew Hamilton knew that and he knew Hamilton meant the People, the entire People, ranged against them in the field. "You're still going. Her parents deserve to hear what happened from someone who loved their daughter, too."

Sergeant Pierantoni came up, with three other troopers, one of them with a stretcher over one shoulder. "We've got a landing zone hacked out, Captain. All the other bodies have been brought to it. She's the last one."

"Give Lieutenant Hamilton a minute alone with her," Thompson said. "And come on." With that, the captain led the party a few score meters away.

Hamilton, once he'd been left alone, started to reach over to brush the burnt stubble from Hodge's scalp. His hand stopped of its own accord millimeters from her. He couldn't bring himself to touch her, not the obscene ruin she'd become. No more could he stroke her face. Instead, he just spoke to the corpse.

"I'm sorry; I can't touch you because this isn't you. I'll punish them for this, Laurie. I promise I will."

He knew the pain he felt was as nothing to the pain he would feel once he really, deep down, came to understand she was gone and was never coming back. And how will I feel when I realize I wasn't man enough to kiss her goodbye?

Then, however hard it was to do, Hamilton leaned over and kissed Hodge's forehead. As he backed away, tears fell.

"God, what a shitty world."