Soldiers

Chapter 38

Ruckus in the Morgue

Esau slogged forward, blaster in his hands and grenade bag over a shoulder. He hadn't slept for thirty hours-hadn't eaten for nearly twenty, except for an energy bar. His belly, he told himself, must think his throat had been cut. But his red-rimmed eyes moved constantly, from the forest half a mile ahead, to the farm woodlots that broke the croplands and pastures, to the Indi tanks moving ahead on their AG cushions. To both left and right stretched other 2nd Regiment companies.

Not all of 2nd Regiment was in his line. The lead rank was 1st Battalion; 2nd and 3rd Battalions followed at thirty-yard intervals, while 4th Battalion sat in armored personnel carriers as a tactical reserve. Esau was glad he wasn't in an APC. They tended to draw heavy fire when they showed up. They weren't supposed to be committed before the tanks and "legs" had the enemy fully engaged, and even then, the enemy would give them serious attention.

As a rule, Esau could immerse himself in these training maneuvers as if they were the real thing. As he was supposed to. He never glanced back at the umpires on their grav scooters, following the action. The sight of them, even the thought of them, weakened the illusion.

No shots had been fired yet from the distant forest, nor from the building and woodlots nearer at hand. Which might mean no one was there, but that seemed unlikely. Surveillance buoys showed things like that. And if no one was there, 2nd Regiment would have crossed in APCs. Only if serious enemy fire was expected would they cross on foot like this.

At that moment, firing broke out from forest, woodlots and steadings-crackling, hissing, thumping-and a voice spoke sharply in his right ear: "Bogies from the rear! Bogies from the rear!" Esau flattened himself as low as he could, then hazarded a glance back past his shoulder. A rank of killer craft swept across the field, slammers flickering. Esau felt a soft pulse strike about at his tailbone, and obediently rolled over, playing casualty. The umpires' instruments recorded all hits, along with the victims' identities, the virtual force, and points of impact.

The assault craft swished by overhead, most of them. A few must have taken "crippling hits" themselves; they landed obediently as casualties. If they hadn't, and promptly, the "enemy" would have been penalized, and the pilots put on report.

The ground was cold but the sun bright, and Esau put a forearm over his eyes. He wondered if Jael had been hit, and if perhaps they should have signed up for bottling. If this had been a real fight, he told himself, and the hit he'd taken had been a hard pulse, signing wouldn't have made any difference. Because surely that had been a slammer. It would have blown his guts, lungs, heart and spine, all to Tophet.

He was aware of 2nd and 3rd Battalions passing him, trotting now. The sound of firing remained intense. It seemed odd to be lying there out of it. He was going to miss some of the action. It occurred to him to sit up and look around, see what was going on. Their own floaters should be up again, suppressing enemy fire.

But it was easier to just lie there with his eyes closed, feeling himself drift into sleep. Then a medic gripped his arm, and he wakened.

"Where are you hit?"

"Tailbone, from behind. It would have been one of the killer craft. If it was real, I'd be deader'n Tophet."

"Okay. I'm going to give you a shot for the pain, just in case."

The man pretended to inject Esau in the side of the neck, then taped a fake syringe to his patient's field jacket and hurried on. Esau let his eyes close again. Who knew, he thought, what would happen when they got into real combat, back home on New Jerusalem. Wyzhnyny weapons were thought to be pretty much the same as human weapons. "Physics is the same everywhere," Sergeant Hawkins had said. Jerries weren't taught physics, but Esau had gotten the basic idea; only certain things were possible. But the Wyzhnyny had four legs under them, and might be stronger than him. Might all of them carry slammers.

"Esau," said Speaker Crosby, "they are way to heck stronger than you are." He patted his horse on the shoulder. "They're near as big as this fella, with arms in proportion."

Esau decided to keep Clancy with him for protection, and looked around for the big hound, but couldn't see him anywhere. Then realized he'd begun to dream. Clancy was a long long ways off, and so was Speaker Crosby. It don't matter, he told himself. You're already dead anyway.

Shortly afterward an armored ambulance landed a few yards away. Without speaking, two medics laid him carefully on an AG stretcher, then took him to the ambulance, where another medic secured the stretcher on brackets and turned on the "warm field."

Soon afterward they arrived at a field "hospital" in the forest, a complex of tents beneath the trees. It was supposed to be protected by a concealment screen so the enemy couldn't find it from the air. The tents were like shallow, upside-down bowls, protected by colors generated by their camouflage fields. The medics moved quickly and smoothly, transferring the casualties to a receiving tent. Calling him dead on arrival, they put Esau in a body bag, and moved him to a morgue tent.

The activity had wakened him again, and because he actually was alive, the bag had been pressed shut only to his waist. He sat up and looked around. There were no attendants in this tent, but the trainee on the floor beside him was also looking around. "Well," the man said. His voice was quiet. "So this is what it's like to be dead."

"Not hardly," Esau answered.

"What's your company?"

"B, 2nd Platoon. Name is Esau Wesley. Yours?"

The other didn't answer at once, as if thinking about it. "Simon Justice," he said at last. "E Company, 3rd Platoon. Can you say bunch of foolishness?"

"What do you mean?"

The man's gesture took in the tent, perhaps the whole hospital, or planet. "All of this. Pretending to fight, pretending to get shot, pretending to be dead. All of it."

Esau decided he didn't like Simon Justice. Didn't like his tone of voice, didn't like his pretense of superiority. "It's not foolishness," Esau replied. He didn't expect to change the man's mind, but the statement required an answer. "We'll be glad we've gone through it when we get back to New Jerusalem."

"Huh! We'll never get to New Jerusalem. The government's going to send us somewhere else, to put down an uprising." His tone suggested scorn for anyone who didn't realize that.

"Where'd you get that notion?" Esau asked.

"Why, it's plain to see. A four-legged critter with a man stuck on the front?" He snorted his scorn.

"That's no more unlikely than what you said." Esau paused. "Are you calling Captain Mulvaney a liar? Or General Pak?"

"That's about right. Yeah."

Esau moved his hands to the open edge of his body bag, separating the closure all the way to his knees. And got up. "Get out of that bag and we'll talk about this," he said.

By that time others in the tent were watching, their eyes on Esau now. The man who called himself Simon Justice, on the other hand, had decided to lay back down again.

"What's the matter?" Esau demanded. "You were big on talk, with all that bullshit."

"It's against regulations to fight," the man answered. "Otherwise I'd get out of this bag and teach you a lesson."

With a single step, Esau was leaning over him, gripped him, pulled him to his feet and jerked him close, bag and all. "Simon Justice," he said, "you're a liar and a coward. And unless you take all that back… "

Another soldier was on his feet now. "A bigger liar'n you know," he said. "He's not Simon Justice. I'm Simon Justice. He's not even in 3rd Platoon. E Company, yes-I've seen him around-but not in 3rd Platoon. So if anybody beats him up, I'm the one ought to do it."

Esau's eyes widened, then he barked a laugh, and grinned at the real Simon Justice. "Well well! He's all yours. Have at it!" He let go the counterfeit, who dropped to the floor in self protection, gripping his body bag closed and yelling at the top of his lungs, "Help! Help! Murder!" waking whatever corpses weren't already awake.

Before either Esau or the real Simon Justice could decide what to do, a Terran medic stepped inside. His sleeves had sergeant's stripes, and above his jacket pocket the name "Sinisalo, Urho E." "What the hell's going on in here?" he barked. "You! And you! Get back in those body bags."

While they did, he murmured softly, as if to someone invisible beside him. Then he looked down at the false Simon Justice. "Are you the one who yelled?"

"Yes, sir," the liar answered softly. "They said they were going to beat me up." His voice was almost too faint to hear. He realized his situation. There were maybe a dozen-at least several others in the tent who'd heard the exchange. He'd never in the world lie his way out of this situation.

Sinisalo frowned, then looked around and pointed to a watching, listening corpse. "You," said the medic. "What happened in here?"

The man told him, closely enough.

Sinisalo looked down at the liar. "Give me your dog tags."

Only the liar's eyes moved.

"That's an order, soldier!"

The liar shook his head, encouraged by the apparency that he wouldn't be beaten up.

A lieutenant hurried in, a Sikh wearing a white turban and Medical Service insignia. "I'm the provost marshal," he said to Sinisalo. "What's going on here?" The provost marshal's post was only one of several he covered, the one he'd least expected to require his attention. His military police unit consisted of one man-himself. When he'd gotten the call, he'd grabbed a stunner, a belt recorder, and a set of handcuffs, and hurried to the morgue. But he was a Sikh, with five years' military experience, and a cram course in the basics of the provost marshal's job. He'd make it go right.

When Sinisalo had described what he'd found and heard, the provost marshal stood over the liar and reached down. "Your dog tags," he said.

Again the liar refused, clasping himself with his arms. The provost knew Jerrie strength, so he turned to Esau. "Sergeant, take his dog tags."

Esau crouched beside the liar, pulled open the body bag, grabbed the man's field jacket and hoisted him to his feet. Hurriedly the liar gave up his dog tags. Esau handed them to the provost marshal, who read them and scowled. "Private Thomas Crisp," he said.

He manacled the now compliant Crisp, then went around the morgue with his belt recorder and got the name, serial number, and unit of each "corpse" there.

"All right," he said, "Wesley, Justice, Crisp, come with me. You other casualties, continue in your roles." He turned to Sinisalo. "Sergeant, you come too."

As he herded his three corpses toward the hospital admin tent, the provost marshal drew his belt comm and called for an MP floater from Division. The hospital had no place to incarcerate anyone.

Before the lieutenant had finished questioning his three Jerries, two other things happened. The MP floater arrived, with six MPs led by a sergeant. And an orderly arrived to report a genuine casualty. A trainee in the maneuvers had been shot in the back with a hard pulse, a slammer pulse. It had scrambled his innards-bones and organs. And all the power slugs used in the maneuvers, including those in the aircraft, had supposedly been for soft pulses.

Saboteurs again! the lieutenant thought, thinking of the parachute incident, the major ordnance and equipment-checking project that had grown out of it, and what was found. When the floater had taken off with the prisoner and the principal witnesses, the lieutenant returned to the morgue to get statements from the other corpses.

Esau fell asleep again even before the MP floater took off, almost as he buckled himself in. Take advantage of your opportunities, he'd thought as they'd walked out to it. He'd heard how it worked for "casualties," from guys who'd gone through it the past couple of days. In an hour or two he'd be reclassified from corpse to combat replacement, and flown to some company other than his own, to fit in as best he could till the exercise was finished. On New Jerusalem, of course, there'd be no replacements, but the general didn't want his casualties to miss out on the training.

Actually it was a dozen hours before he was reassigned. Division's provost marshal let him sleep for eight hours before questioning him. And learned nothing he didn't already have on cube.