Casualties of War - Bennett R. Coles (leveled readers TXT) 📗

Casualties of War

By Bennett R. Coles

Excerpt – chapter 9

                  Katja dropped the fork onto her half-eaten stew and sat back. The rain was still pelting against the window of her office, the heavy dampness of the air seeping through the thin fabric of her garrison uniform. The beef stew had appealed at the time, a good, thick meal to ward off the chill, but now she couldn’t bear another bite. She sighed and rubbed a hand across her face as she tossed the remainder of her lunch into the bin.

She stared at the screen for a moment longer. The curt, mil-speak message was only two paras long, but it was the first positive direction she’d received from the Astral Corps in weeks. And it summed up pretty neatly what her career had been reduced to. She was going to be staying at this tiny airlift station on the eastern edge of the Malayan archipelago. She was to take formal command of the three drop ships and their maintenance crews, and provide local lift services as requested by military forces.

                  Why was the Corps making such a big deal about her psychological test results? Of course she was affected by her time in combat – who wouldn’t be? And hadn’t she proved her worth in combat several times over? It hardly seemed fair for a recipient of the Astral Star to be banished to some backwater while young pups like Jack Mallory got sent right back into space.

                  Jack had already sent her a few messages, describing his new ship and the strange command structure of a Research vessel. Katja smiled slightly as she imagined young Jack set loose like a happy bull in a china shop of petrie dishes, and wondered how his bubbling enthusiasm would mesh with stringent experimental protocols. The fact that Thomas Kane had apparently joined him on the ship was a bit of odd news – she felt Thomas would have aimed higher in his post-war career – but at least he’d be able to keep Jack on target. She didn’t envy either of them their new lives in lab coats, but at least they were still contributing to Terra’s well-being.

                  The three screens built into her desk stared up expectantly, their insatiable demand for administrative oversight crying out to her. She stared back at them, taking a moment to curse the doctors and their compassion. She’d done all the usual post-traumatic training – it was part of the fourth-year curriculum at the Astral College – and she knew that they’d done right by posting her here. A nice, slow-paced administrative posting that kept her connected to operations (the three drop ships under her command were theoretically available to reinforce local troops in case of invasion or insurrection) but kept her out of stressful situations. It was a text-book example of where to post a struggling combat veteran. And it was hell.

                  Cradling her chin, she looked out again at the dark grey world through her window. Northern Oceania had sounded so exotic, with its green mountains and glistening beaches. No-one had mentioned the monsoon. And despite the State Terraform Department’s best efforts, the rains still lasted for nearly half the year. She’d been here over a month and had yet to see a day without rain.

She leaned back, closing her eyes. The tears were suddenly close, much closer than they ever got during the day. Her vision blurred like the rain-pelted window. It was only a matter of time before her family found out where she was, laying out her shame for all to see: decorated veteran Katja Emmes, cracked after her first combat tour and buried in a washed-out backwater.

Anger was becoming her friend these days, as it pushed aside more vulnerable feelings, and she wrapped herself in it like an old blanket as she began typing up her weekly logistic requirements message.

A gentle buzz in her ear distracted her. It was the military line. She tapped her commpiece. “Lieutenant Emmes.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Katja.” The voice was slightly garbled and the length of delay suggested a transmission from beyond orbit. “This is Chuck Merriman, ANL.”

Her hands clenched into fists, but she forced them to relax. “Hello, Mr. Merriman.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you on duty, but you haven’t been returning my calls to your civilian number.”

She leaned back in her chair, vaguely remembering deleting all of her messages over the past few days. “I’ve been very busy. How did you reach me on this military circuit?”

Even through the clutter she heard his wry amusement. “It’s a public number, Lieutenant. I just spoke to your base operator and asked to be patched through.”

She took a long, final deep breath, and made a note to speak to the idiot trooper who’d obligingly given access to the media. “Well, you just caught me between meetings, so make it fast.”

“I’m going to be in your region next week and I was hoping to do a follow-up interview like we discussed back at Longreach. Would there be a good time for me to drop in for an hour or so?”

There was no way her father was going to see her rotting in this backwater on the system-wide news. “I’m actually going to be very busy with operations for the next while. Perhaps you’d have better luck catching up with my father – I think he’s still here on Earth.”

“Mars, actually – low-g combat training. I’m definitely going to meet up with him, but since I was in the area I wanted to take advantage of my proximity to you.”

A reporter knew with greater accuracy the whereabouts of her own family. That spoke volumes. And that wasn’t the only thing that didn’t sit right. “What do you mean you’re in the area? What else is going on?”

A gentle laugh. “Although it may surprise you, Miss Katja, you’re not the only important thing in my life. I’ve been covering the strikes in Papua New Guinea for the last two weeks.”

Katja stood bolt upright. Strikes in Papua New Guinea? Where were her orders? Then she recalled watching the news: labour strikes, not combat strikes. She searched her memory; something to do with munitions workers trying to organize a labour union or some nonsense like that. Like the State would ever let such a critical industry start calling the shots.

Now she felt stupid. “Mr. Merriman, thanks for your call. I have your contact info so I’ll get back to you.”

She broke the connection and sat down again, sighing. He was just a reporter doing his job, and she supposed it should be an honour, but she was going to set the tone of how the worlds saw her, and this was not it.

                  She was a combat veteran of the most elite fighting force in Terra. And there was nothing her father, Chuck Merriman, or even those fucking doctors could do to take that away from her.

She heard a knock on the open door. Sergeant Huebner filled the door frame.

                  “Lieutenant Emmes, ma’am?”

                  “Yes, Sergeant?”

                  “Ma’am, the Army’s outside. They say they want our drop ships to lift them to Goa.”

                  She called up the day’s operational schedule. Of her three drop ships, one was in maintenance, one was being used for training and one was on stand-by. No scheduled lift of Army assets.

                  “We’ve got nothing planned. Did they give you a movement order?”

                  “Uhh, no, ma’am.”

                  “Did you ask for one?”

                  His dull silence was answer enough. She’d already been wondering how she could put a positive spin on Huebner’s annual assessment.

                  He’s not very bright, but can lift heavy things.

                  She pushed back her chair and rounded the desk.

                  “Tell them I’ll be right there.”

                  He obligingly withdrew.

                  A glance at the rain on her window prompted her to reach for her combat jacket. Her hand froze in mid-motion, however, as her eyes fell upon her tunic hanging against the wall.

She brushed her fingers on the qualification badges, one for Strike Officer and a second, smaller one for Fast Attack, and she reminded herself that most Terrans would never – could never – earn such qualifications. She was part of an elite, and even if living within that elite made it seem routine, she reminded herself that it was exceptional. Below the badges were the newest additions to her uniform, to her career, to her life. Two medals. On the outside was the campaign medal for the recent troubles – known officially as the Colonial Uprising – with bars for Sirius and Centauria. And next to it, in the place of honour over her heart, was the Astral Star. The third-highest award for valour in the Terran military, it set her apart from her peers, declared her truly exceptional even amongst the elite.

                  But it had earned her little more than a glance from her father, and it hadn’t prevented her being shipped off to an Astral backwater to rot while the doctors wrung their hands over her precious mental state.

                  Maybe those doctors should view the recordings from her helmet-cam. As she reached to pull the tunic from its hanger she remembered the severed limbs of Centauri crewmembers floating in zero-gee around her, of blood floating in ever-growing spherical globs around the smoky interior of the enemy battle cruiser as she and her three troopers blasted it apart from the inside. The smoke began to move, sucked by the ominous wind that spoke of an uncontained breech in the hull. The hatch ahead open for a moment. Bullets pinged off her armoured spacesuit as Hernandez pushed her aside and returned fire. She burst through into the darkened space, firing her explosive rounds at the hidden Centauri crew. A bullet cracked off her faceplate. She tucked into a ball as she floated helplessly upward, more shots pinging her helmet.

                  Maybe those doctors should watch her helmet-cam as the deck exploded downward, and revealed an APR robot staring back up at her. As she felt herself flung aside and watched as rockets smashed up into Hernandez, blowing his powerful body apart like scraps of meat. She scrambled along the top of the corridor in zero-g.

                  “APR’s! APR’s!” she screamed to Assad and Jackson, still trapped one deck below. “Get out of there!”

                  Maybe those fucking doctors should watch as Assad and Jackson were blasted to pieces by the Centauri war machines. And they should listen to the radio chatter as Sergeant Chang reported his own team’s casualties in the engine room. The smoke was moving faster now, riding the precious air out into the vacuum of space. Katja knew she was cut off and alone. Ignoring Chang’s attempts to fight his way to her, she ordered him and his team to escape even while she followed the river of smoke through a buckled door and into a darkened, outer compartment.

                  The air pressure was dropping outside her spacesuit. On her external audio she could hear the frantic calls of enemy troops approaching. There was only one way out. She pointed her rifle at the crack in the bulkhead and fired twice. The hull exploded outward and she felt the tidal wave of escaping air carry her forward. She crashed through the opening. Spinning stars. And then darkness.

                  Silence and darkness.

                  Silence and darkness.

                  “Ma’am?”

                  She opened her eyes, eyes darting around the dim, grey walls of her office. Rain pelted against the window. The air was still. The walls were stable. The tunic hung from her balled fist, soft fabric clutched between her fingers. She shook off the nightmare and took several deep, calming breaths.

“Ma’am?”

Huebner had reappeared.

Forcing her fingers to relax, she slipped the tunic in a swift motion. “Let’s deal with these Army idiots.”

                  The rain bounced high off the paved surface of the courtyard, breaking down into mud